Birds of the Rockies

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

This book falls victim to a conflict between format and content. Someone
decided it should be a pocket-sized production for use in the field; the
author and illustrator obviously had other plans, and produced copy and
art more suitable to a larger format. The result is content suitable for
leisurely reading, unhappily squashed into a quick-reference format.
Much of the copy is illegible because it is surprinted over the
illustrations. A knowledgeable designer could have made this technique
work in a coffee-table format; in a pocket-sized book it is a disaster.

The text is frankly selective and anecdotal. The author has not
attempted to write a field guide, but rather to record a collection of
interesting observations and little-known facts about 110 bird species
that appear in the Rockies. That is a legitimate, interesting approach,
valid as long as the reader realizes that the book covers only about
one-third of the species occurring in the Rockies.

The art succeeds as selective illustrations, but will disappoint anyone
expecting identification plates. Again, the approach is valid for any
format except a field guide. Most illustrations show only the male
plumage.

The work has two unique features. First it starts with a “brute force
index,” which is a visual “summary” and page locator, in four
plates, of all the birds covered. Second, it has a comprehensive
checklist of more than 300 birds found in the Rockies, showing their
status from abundant to very rare, by season and by six major areas.