Pete DunneBesprekingen

Perfect book to learn about gulls!

Hawks - probably the most popular birds among birders - are notoriously difficult to identify using the traditional field-mark method. Hawks in Flight show how to recognize hawks the way we often recognize our friends at a distance: by their general body shape, the way they move, and the places they are most likely to be seen. Pete Dunne's clear, lively text brings to life each species' distinctive characteristics , and their visual essence is captures in David Sibley's elegant drawings and Clay Sutton's photographs.

Certainly not Dunne's best work. There's no sunny expanse of his usual 8-grade level sense of humor. It was ok.

Explores all the springtime prairie has to offer and builds the connection between man and nature.

North American Birds of Prey

In this book, bursting with more information than any field guide could hold, the well-known author and birder Pete Dunne introduces readers to the "Cape May School," or GISS, method of identification, which focuses on a bird holistically, giving more weight to the general impression of the bird than to specific field marks. After determining the most likely possibilities by considering such factors as habitat and season, the birder uses characteristics such as size, shape, behavior, flight pattern, and vocalizations to identify a bird. The book provides an arsenal of additional hints and helpful clues to guide a birder when, even after a review of a field guide, the identification still hangs in the balance. This supplement to field guides shares the knowledge and skills that expert birders bring to identification challenges.

book and Audio CD

Before you ID them, You have to see them

Well written, but you have to be a serious birder to appreciate this book. I sometimes got "lost" in all the different names. However, I learned there is a lot of competition in birding.

Fun, easy read on the curious pastime of birding.½

These stories represent many of the best studies of wildlife ever written. Dunne gives us both a detailed glimpse of wildlife going about their daily lives, and occasional humor and wit. Some of the stories touch on border topics, such as the individual personalities and loyalty of some rural hunting dogs.

One story which shares the books title is the very best I have read in explaining how a person can enjoy both birding and hunting with equal fervor. In that essay he equates hunters being actors in a play while he equates birders as being in the audience watching the play. But then he goes further and does a great job giving us glimpses of the excitement of both and showing that they are not mutually exclusive..

This is possibly the best reference on hawk identification for North America. The authors have drawn on a large number of contributors to get things correct and included. The three main authors are all top in their fields. Drawings and photos are the very best and show the birds in characteristic attitudes.

The techniques recommended by the authors for identifying hawks involves an array of inputs.
The authors mention that this holistic approach is an evolution from the Peterson era of plumage-emphasized method.

It appears that learning this superior approach will not be a quick or easy endevour but will take years of usage to apply well, but still, looks to be superior.

I have rated this reference a 4 out of five for one reason;
It is far too large to carry on each outing and far too complex to look up a questionable bird quickly. Information is mostly in the form of text, not just photos or tables that can be thumbed through quickly while the bird is in view. Granted the hawk types are on color-coded pages. Still, much important information can be conveyed mostly just by reading the text descriptions of the candidate species. Even the book's weight is too heavy to tote around. To me, this is an evening reference for the home, after arriving back from a birding trip, which may be too late to use its suggestions for differentiating somewhat similar hawks.

Perhaps this heavy reference could be used most effectively on a hawk watch as there the size and weight would not be a problem.
Probably the best method for learning the hawks is to go to a hawk watch and listen to the expert mentor's explanation of why a target bird is what it is. He or she will describe the mannerisms that identify it. Then you can open this book and read those mannerisms and ask about any that were not present or other mannerisms that looked present but do not fit the identification. This combination of mentor and reference book would be the quickest and best way to learn hawks in my mind, and this is the book to bring for that.

A good basic overview on how to go about birding by one of the best known birders in the world. No new secrets handed out, just good solid info.

Excellent book--entertaining descriptions and details, keeps you laughing while you learn essential items for field use.

There is no longer any need to assemble a birding library. Buy a Sibley Guide, add this wonderful door-stop, and you are all set. There's not a single illustration here. It is just full of Dunne-isms, observations and winsome, quaint nicknames of all of North America's birds.½

If you want to see a region of NJ that may even surprise many who live here, one really must venture down to the Delaware bayshore.

Once home to a number of thriving communities that made their living from the rich bay waters, plentiful with blue crabs and oysters, today visiting them is often like stepping back in time. And if you can deal with the insects, one of the few things that may thankfully retard development, it is a wild and beautiful area.

"Likewise, there is no green like salt marsh hay. It is deep and rich and pure; untainted by blue, untinged by yellow. Just pure, pure primary green. Green enough to make the Emerald Isle want to trade up. Green enough to make you wonder what the rest of Eden was like, because after its equilibrium was shattered by a simple act of harvest, it is pretty clear that some of it washed up here, on the shore of the Delaware Bay."

Mr. Dunne, a resident, with his wife, of the charming Cumberland county town of Mauricetown, vice president of the the New Jersey Audubon Society and director of the Cape May Bird Observatory loves the bay coast of NJ and has written a book that makes that very clear. It is also a book that will share that beauty with the reader.

Part history, part geology, part natural science book and 100% love story with the land and hardy people that make this area their home, Bayshore Summer is a delightful book. How can I not love a look that takes us several time to his local Wawa convenience store, a store I know quite well, and explains where the name Wawa comes from? How can I not love a book that tells us, time and time again, about the amazing array of incredible insects that populate this area? Having been driven back to the safety of my car, blood running down my arms and legs, when the breeze died down and the attack of the green heads began, I so understand.

But don't get me wrong, Mr. Dunne does not sugar coat the story. It is a place with its challenges. He takes us along with a fishing captain trying to eke out a living catching blue crabs and bait fish and often barely breaking even with his costs of going out. He takes us to a couple of the farms of Cumberland county that depend on migrant workers..illegal migrant workers...and introduces us to a few of those workers that return, year after year, to support their families back home. We travel along to Thompsons Beach, a community reclaimed by the bay, the houses that lined the shore washed away and go along with Mr. Dunne to see the constant battle between deer poachers and game wardens. He discusses the delicate balance that saw a virus almost totally wipe out the once thriving oyster harvest, overfishing that almost destroyed the bay's Atlantic Sturgeon, the harvesting of the horseshoe crab, a prehistoric looking creature if there ever was one, that had a huge effect on the millions of migrating birds that feed along the coast.

But it is not all a negative story. We visit a family farm that still successfully harvests salt hay, a harvest with a history that is centuries old in the area. Herons and egrets are once again plentiful, ospreys successfully nesting and hatching young throughout the marshlands. Harvesting the horseshoe crab is now proscribed and hopefully they will start making a comeback and maybe the weakfish will return in greater numbers some day soon. And maybe a book like this will help more people understand what a treasure we have along our bayshore and help to protect it.½

Dunne's book provides all the exhausting detail that the other field guides don't have room to include, without one glaring detail (photographs or paintings of the birds themselves), hence the "companion" part of the title. This book should be part of the library of any serious birder.

These stories are outstanding. Dunne knows what birders care about and he knows the various aspects of birds and birding that birders appreciate, and those that most ignore.
In this group of stories, He deals with many topics from the light0hearted through the serious ones. The stories are very well written.. Humerous stories are hilarious and serious stories are quite poingnant. Any facts mentioned in the serious stories are accurrate.

Dunne brings out the personality of both the birds in the stories, but also the people. We even get a pretty good glimpse of Dunne's personality through several of the stories. Very good reading for bird behavior, birder behavior, and for entertainment.

As the title implies, this is not a field guide. There are no illustrations and no maps. Rather, this is the next best thing to going birding with an expert -- the little details and intangibles that experts use to identify birds, as well as textual descriptions of the appearance and range. (The descriptions aren't the reason to buy the book, though it's interesting to see Dunne's interpretations, as he often stresses different things than does the author of your favorite field guide.) The reason to buy this book are the other details -- accounts of behavior, general appearance, other birds (and, when relevant, other animals) found in the same locations, etc.) I've found this book both useful and fun, and recommend it to anyone wanting to go beyond field marks for bird identification.

A terrific guide on the finer points of IDing hawks in the wild, and in the way they're most often seen - far above head, in flight. Sometimes it's still a challenge, but this book helped me a lot in getting to know what to look for when IDing these sometimes difficult birds.½

Great stories by New Jersey's master story teller. I liked it better than its sequel.½

The book that really compiled years of hawkwatchers' sage advice and identification tips. A must read for a beginner and intermediate hawkwatcher. Once the "gestalt" is nailed down, you can move on to any of the several other more recent hawk guides. Unlike HAWKS IN FLIGHT these other books emphasize molt and plumage characteristics. That's a big help for the remaining 2% or so of other ID challenges. This book will handle the first 98%. Enjoy Pete Dunne's humor and wit.

As always with Pete Dunne, well written with plenty of humor. A great birding adventure, right down to the very last story of the venerable National Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count.

NA

Book excellent condition; dust cover has some wear