36

Bildstein, K L. 1987. Behavioral ecology of CZarlt, RJ 1975. A field study of the Short-Red-tailed Hawks (Buteo jamaicensis) , eared Owl, Asio flammeu.s Polltopiddan, inRough-legged Hawks (Buteo Zagopus) , North America. Wildlife MonographsNorthern Harriers (Circus ')'aneu.s) , and 47:1-67.American Kestrels (Falco sparverius) in Palmer, R S. (ed.). 1988. I-Iandbook of Northsouth central Ohio. Ohio Biological American Birds. Volume 4: DiurnalSurvey. Biological Note Number 18. Ohio Raptors (Part I). Yale University Press.State University, Columbus, Ohio. New Haven, Connecticut.

Watson, D. 1977. The I-len I-Iarrier. T. and A.

D. Poyser. Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire,England.

Bruce W. Duncan andJanet E. Snaith, 10 Chateau Court, Hamilton, OntarioL9C 5P2

Book Reviews

Nothing Gold Can Stay; The Wildlife of Upper Canada. By W Fraser Sandercombe.The Boston Mills Press, Erin, Ontario. 188pp. ($19.95)

A while ago I was reading the diary are given evocative and/or poeticof Elizabeth Simcoe, wife of titles ("None Gets Out Alive" forOntario's first Lieutenant-Governor the chapter on squirrels and hares;(1792-1796), and was fascinated by "Trophy Meat" for the chapter onthe numerous, interesting natural ungulates, etc.). In each the authorhistory references. I thought it selects passages from a variety ofwould be interesting to go through well-known pioneer wri ters andher diary and other similar sources observers, including Catharine Parrand try to compose a picture of Traill, Phillip H. Goss (who wrotewhat the landscape of Upper about Lower Canada, by the way),Canada looked like, before Henry Scadding, Suzanna Moodie,deve lopmen t so fundamen tally etc. With each subject area there ischanged it. Accordingly, I was an editorial by the author,delighted soon after to hear that a summarizing the situation ornew book, Nothing Gold Can Stay, expounding his views on thehad precisely that as its purpose. To matter. Many beautifully executedquol.e from the introduction, it "is pen and ink sketches of the animalsabout how the land was when the and situations discussed aresettlers arrived, how they used it distributed through the text.and abused it, added to it, took It is, ironically, the graphic andaway from it". Sounds great, eh? artistic success of Nothing Gold CanUnfortunately, the book falls Stay - and it is a truly beautifullyconsiderably short of the mark. illustrated and crafted package -

It is sub-divided into a variety of that points towards its major failing.thematic chapters such as birds, Not nearly enough atten tjon washun ting, fish and fishing, etc. Many paid to what went into this pretty

ONTARIO mRDSAPRIL 1989

package. The relatively few bits ofhard fact kind of rattle around inan attractive but rather emptyspace. Here are a few generalexamples of the problems with thisbook.

First, relatively few sources areused and those tend to be thefamous Rice Lake naturalists (theTraills, Moodies, Jamesons, etc.) orToron to area correspondents.Where are the eastern Ontariopeople (E. Billings, W. P. Lett, W.Goldie, for example) and why sofew from W. Pope of southwesternOntario? Very few newspaperreferences are apparent and not

one citation of the many importantarticles and papers in early journalssuch as the Canadian Naturalist and

Geologist (1856 and on) or theCanadianJournal (1852 and on)could be found, let alone any ofJohn Richardson's observations inUpper Canada in the 1820spublished in Fauna Boreali ­Americana in 1831. Surely these areat least as important as thesubjective opinions of untrainedsettlers? After all, the author wantsto find out what the naturallandscape was like, notjust whatsettlers thought it was like.

Secondly, while the author'spassion for the natural world andits creatures is clearly and sincerelyexpressed in his editorials and hislovely and, at times, hauntingsketches, his grasp of the largernatural history picture (past andpresent) seems less secure. Hisstatements that the Common Loon

will become extirpated in Ontariobecause of industrial pollution, thatNorthern Bobwhite were oncenumerous over most of UpperCanada, that the Fisher is extinct insouthern Ontario, and that the onlybreeding Bald Eagles in(southern?) Ontario "may be a fewup on the Bruce Peninsula" shakesone's confidence in the factualfoundation of the book.

Thirdly, I really get steamedwhen I see someone referring tothe natural environment as "theecology", as author Sandercombedoes on page 10. It's a pet peeve, Iacknowledge, but such afundamental misunderstanding ofsuch a basic term would surelybother someone reading a bookdiscussing "the physics" or "themedicine" [sic].

In a nutshell, this book is visuallymagnificent but is disappointing asa source of solid, dependableinformation on the early landscapeof sou thern Ontario. The passionand conviction of the author's ed­itorials are not sufficien t to balancethe factual errors, misunderstand­ings, and omissions. So it is that afine concept remains unfulfilled.

If you like artistic,impressionistic sketches of thenatural world and natural creatures,you will enjoy the visual feastoffered by Nothing Gold Can Stay.

The factual offering is rathermeagre, however, and will leavethose expecting a hearty feed offacts with grumbling innards.

37

Daniel F. Brunton, 2704 Marie Street, Ottawa, Ontario K2B 7E4

VOLUME 7 NUMBER 1

38

The Tanagers; Natural History, Distributian and ldentificatian. By Morton L. Islerand Phyllis R Isler. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D. C. 404pp, 32colour plates.

Alas for the unfortunate OntarioField Ornithologists! Poor,impoverished, deprived souls, theyoperate in an almost tanager-lessenvironment. No wave of spring

. warblers can really compensatethem for the fact that, at the verymost, they have to make do withthree species of one genus. But outthere, south of them, the other 239species of the most varied,fascinating, and colourful group ofbirds in the world awaits anybodywith the time, finance, anddetermination to seek them out.The present book can only intensifYthe resolve of any red-bloodedbirdwatcher to do just that.

The first problem confrontingany author writing about tanagers isto decide what, in fact, is a tanager.There exists a whole crowd ofanomalous, puzzling species,ranging from the unique thrasher­like Thrush-Tanager to themysterious Pardusco, an enigmaticlittle bird resembling a scruffY fallCommon Yellowthroat, found onlyin a few upland woodlots in centralPeru. In fact, about 20 years ago R.W. Storer wrote an excellen t littlereview en titled ''What is aTanager?", coming to theconclusion, as I recollect, that it wasnot an easy question. Fortunately,in recen t years, biochemistry hasresolved a lot of these taxonomicproblems. The present authors take

Ot\i'TARIO BIRDS APRIL 1989

a broad viewpoint, and the bookcovers not only the conven tionaltanagers, an t-tanagers, shrike­tanagers, bush-tanagers,hemispinguses, chlorophonias, andeuphonias, but also the Swallow­tanager, flower-piercers, dacnises,and honeycreepers. The bizarreGiant Conebill is included, but allthe other conebills and theBananaquit are not.

Apart from a brief butinformative essay on the nature oftanagers, the book is almost entirelytaken up with individual speciesaccounts. These consist of notes ongeographic and elevational range,habitat and behaviour,vocalizations, a range map, and alist of literature sources (an IS-pagebibliography is giJen at the end). Insome cases, such as the polytypicStripe-headed Tanager, differentsubspecies groups are dealt withseparately. No detailed plumagedescriptions are given; instead, theplates are allowed to speak forthemselves. Some of the largergenera, such as Euphonia andTangara, are the subjects of briefessays located before the speciesaccounts.

The authors have not attemptedto generate new information;instead, they have collected, verycomprehensively as far as I can see,just about everything worthwhilethat has been written about

39

tanagers, and then presented it in have never been described. Thesean ordered, accessible, and are not all obscure species foundreadable fashion. This is of itself only in remote places, but includevaluable; but especially worthwhile birds such as the Hoodedis the fact that they have gathered a Mountain-tanager, Spangle-eheekedlarge amount of hitherto Tanager, and Fulvous-headedunpublished observations from the Tanager, which are perfectlynote-books of some of the great common in their ranges. Equalvirtuosi of presen t-day Neotropical gaps occur in basic knowledge offield ornithology. By itself this behaviour and habits of a largejustifies the book. number of species, an unbearable

All the 242 species are illustrated challenge which should send anyin colour, and in many cases several birdwatchers worth their saltraces are depic ted if they are scurrying off to see their Banksufficiently different to warrant it. Managers to borrow the price of anThe quality of the colour plates is airplane ticket to Lima. If the Islers'adequate, but certainly not excellent book stimulates tanager-outstanding; for somebody who has deficient Ontarians to wing theirbeen spoilt by the incomparable way southwards, it will have served aartistry of a Guy Tudor, they are a good purpose; but in any case Ilittle disappointing. Nevertheless recommend it as an enjoyable,they are workmanlike, generally valuable, and comprehensiveaccurate, and entirely usable. account of a fascinating group of

The book is, as far as I can see, birds, and a worthwhile addition topretty well free of trivial errors. The the literature of Neotropicalonly obvious omission is the Black- ornithology.throated Euphonia, a very dubiousspecies known from one specimenonly of obscure provenance, whichis in any case probably a hybrid.The references at the back of thebook go up to 1985, and the Green-capped Tanager, just described inthe Wilson Bulletin in that year, wasobviously added at the last minuteto the colour plates.

A point which cannot fail tostrike any reader is how little isknown about many of the species. to

For example, it appears that thenests and eggs of almost 100 of the242 species dealt with in the book

David Brewer, R. R. #1, Puslinch, Ontario NOB 2]0

VOLUME 7 NUMBER 1

40

Colonial waterbirds nesting in Canadian Lake Huron in 1980. By D. V. Weseloh, P.Mineau, S. M. Teeple, H. Blokpoe~ and B. Ratcliff 1986. Canadian WildlifeService Progress Note No. 165. 28pp. Free.

This report summarizes data on thenesting populations of colonialwaterbirds in the Canadian part ofLake Huron, including GeorgianBay and the North Channel. Thespecies included in this study areDouble-crested Cormoran t(Phalacrocorax auritus) , Great BlueHeron (Ardea herodias) , Black­crowned Night-Heron (Nycticoraxnycticorax) , Herring Gull (Larusargentatus) , Ring-billed Gull (L.delawarensis) , Caspian Tern (Sternacaspia) , and Common Tern (S.

hirundo). The methodologyemployed during the survey is welloutlined, so that directcomparisons of nesting populationsat these sites (427 of them!) will befacilitated in the future. Several

maps and tables summarize thelocations and numbers of thesespecies in Lake Huron. Where dataon former breeding populationswere available, changes are noted.Only Common Tern has decreasedin n umbers on its historicalcolonies in the study area. Thisreport also provides interestingnotes on habitat preferences andon patterns of co-occurrence ofthese species in the breedingcolonies in Lake Huron. It alsodocuments the first nesting recordofBlack-erowned Night-Heron inManitoulin District (now knownfrom several sites in the District­see Atlas of the Breeding Birds ofOntario).

W. J. Crins, P. O. Box 62, Alcove, New York 12007

Ring-bulled Gull / photo by R D. McRae

ONTARIO BIRDS APRIL 1989