What with everyone and their dog seeming to be watching “Tiger King” at the moment, I thought that perhaps bringing attention to a new novel that also takes the world of private zoos in the south-eastern United States as an element in its central plot – or at least, that’s where it begins – might be in order.
I’m beginning to wonder if Mark Avery has even risen from his reading chair for the past fortnight as he posted three new book reviews to his blog this Sunday: Tessa Boase’s new “Mrs Pankhurst’s Purple Feather,” Seán Lysaght’s “Eagle Country,” and an updated and reissued edition of David Lack’s classic 1956 work “Swifts in a Tower.”
In Darryl McGrath’s new book “Flight Paths; A Field Journal of Hope, Heartbreak, and Miracles with New York’s Bird People,” published under the State University of New York Press’ Excelsior Editions imprint, the story of how teams of biologists worked to stabilize and eventually restore the populations of these birds is interwoven with the challenges to, and efforts being taken on behalf of, four other threatened bird species to yield what is described as “engaging” and “compelling” by early reviewers.
You’ve likely heard many times that Benjamin Franklin would have preferred the Wild Turkey as the official bird of the United States rather than the American Bald Eagle. Unfortunately, the manner in which the story is now generally told somewhat misrepresents the purpose of the letter from which quotes used to support it are commonly taken.