Birds of the Raincoast: Habits and Habitat

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

This coffee-table book contains a text, but its most conspicuous feature
is the colour photographs, and these are magnificent, even when judged
by the high standards that now operate in bird photography. Perhaps the
most sensational is one of a great blue heron in the act of plunging its
head into the water to catch its prey.

The text, however, encounters some problems. It is written, for the
most part, by a country doctor who is also a naturalist and an assistant
professor of English, so it is not a “professional” ornithological
production; but what is it? Frankly, I’m not sure. The individual
chapters are defined primarily by habitat: “Birds of the Estuary,”
“River Birds,” etc. Geographical? Hardly. The prose varies from the
vaguely poetic (“Step into the field in the quiet stillness of a fine
April morning, it is a pleasure simply to breathe”) to the crisply
informative (“The trumpeter swan is the largest of the North American
waterfowl”). I find myself wondering about the intended readership.

We are told that it was written “to help birdwatchers, naturalists
and environmentalists understand and appreciate the diversity of bird
species and specialized habitats”; but such people will not need much
of the information—they will either know it or find it most succinctly
and conveniently in a field guide. And they certainly don’t need to be
told, in a photo caption, that bird feeders “are great places to see
birds” and that they “also help birds survive the cold winter
days.”

So I’m puzzled. Yes, it’s a delightful book to leaf through and
marvel at the beauty of the birds and the skill of the photographers,
but when I tried to read the text I found myself continually distracted
by the illustrations. After all, in some situations a picture really is
worth a thousand words. Fortunately, there are well over 200 of them
here. For that reason alone, the book is well worth the price.