Field guides to specific urban neighborhoods? When Leslie Day’s new book Field Guide to the Neighborhood Birds of New York City is published by Johns Hopkins University Press, then yes, there will be – one.
Given the 29 June 2015 5-4 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court against the E.P.A.’s attempt at regulating the levels of Mercury and other toxins emitted by power plants, the publication of Charles F. Wurster’s new book DDT Wars: Rescuing Our National Bird, Preventing Cancer, and Creating the Environmental Defense Fund by Oxford University Press couldn’t be more timely.
Difficult as it may be to believe, given all the time I have spent afield over the past decades, I have not yet seen a fox in the wild. Although Red Foxes, Vulpes vulpes, do inhabit the entirety of the northern hemisphere, including the Pacific Northwest where I live, I have never once seen so much as the swish of a tail or the twitch of a ear. Consequently, given the old adage “out of sight, out of mind,” I have never had much of a reason to devote any significant amount of time to learning about them.
The most scared I have ever been as the result of an encounter with another living creature involved a close call with a Fer-de-Lance (Bothrops asper) along a trail in Panama. Even after the encounter was over, I felt physically ill for most an hour. Yet even so, my fascination for this astonishingly beautiful as well as highly venomous viper grew as a result of the experience.