The North American Animal Almanac

Dean Tudor is a journalism professor at the Ryerson Polytechnical
Institute and founding editor of the CBRA.

Here is a good handbook for the naturalist observer, although it is not strictly a comprehensive fieldbook. It furnishes information about 461 species of mammals, 927 birds, 268 reptiles, 192 amphibians, and 712 freshwater fish. In keeping with the title, the arrangement is by month, forming a calendar of events with the movement of the seasons. Throughout, there is much advice and information: as I write this in September, I look at the beginnings of autumn. The historical calendar tells me that on September 15 the largest northern pike (46 pounds, 2 ounces) ever taken in North America was caught at the Sacandaga Reserve in New York in 1940, and that Darwin dropped anchor in the Galapagos on that date in 1835. There are some stories, both fact and fiction, about the monarch butterfly, the rattlesnake, the passenger pigeon, and the buffalo.

The book is chock full of trivia bits, with lots of black-and-white photographs and “older” engravings. Most of the almanac was researched at the Royal Ontario Museum and at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The interesting appendices contain lists of things and addresses, such as the classification of animals, the national parks of the United States and Canada, the zoos of the United States and Canada, the natural history museums of North America, and the various wildlife and environmental organizations on this continent. This is an interesting reference source, well worth the money for even the smallest of libraries.