Book Review: The Gull Guide North America

This is the second field guide I have looked forward to reviewing.  Last week I reviewed Dragonflies of North America.  Again, just today, and hot off the press, I received The Gull Guide North America by Amar Ayyash, Princeton University Press, 2024 in my mailbox.

I've already received some help with my review from the author himself, Amar Ayyash, who was interviewed by Nate Swick for the October 24th, 2024 American Birding Podcast, number 08-43 and titled Gulls are for Everyone with Amar Ayyash.  If you are a birder and do not already subscribe to this podcast, I recommend that you do. Nate Swick does a terrific job with it and has done some excellent interviews.  His interview with Amar about his new book is no exception.  As an aside, the October 24th podcast begins with an excellent commentary by Nate on the "de-extinction world" with focus on the Ivory-billed Woodpecker and the Passenger Pigeon.  His podcasts often begin with a brief commentary like this and Nates's insights are revealing. 

But, I digress.  This blog post is about gulls, and in particular about Amar Ayyash's new gull book.  Having just received it in the mail clearly I have not had the chance to read or use it fully.  But I am excited to review it.  

Amar Ayyash is a man who knows gulls.  I have to confess to being a long-time secret admirer of Amar.  His longstanding blog Anything Larus is one of my favorites with a monthly listing of rarity sightings and a monthly identification quiz which is challenging and fun. Before he changed his blog to its present format, he posted his photos with description and also highlighted gull events, like his organization of the Illinois Ornithological Society's annual Gull Frolic on Lake Michigan. I've plucked Amar's old-style blog link below from GeoffWilliamson.info (guest speaker at the 2024 Gull Frolic) to remind readers how Anything Larus used to look.  In this March 2015 blog entry he is highlighting the Herring/Kelp gull hybrid Chandeleur Gull which is found on the Chandeleur Islands 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico (page 316 in the book).  I sort of miss his old blog format.  I loved his photos and descriptions of the gulls and the weather, most commonly cold and windy.  Writing a book of this complexity requires its own full attention and research.  Writing a blog is mostly a hobby, although Anything Larus in its present format must be an excellent tool for much of Amar's research.  Something else which heightened my secret admiration of Amar Ayyash was when I learned that he is a high school math teacher.  Truly admirable.  I read somewhere that he wrote most of the narrative for his species accounts during the Covid lock down.    

The ABA podcast interview starts with the awareness that most birders struggle with gull identification and aging as in "I don't do gulls."  (In Baltimore I had a friend who would say, "Me and gulls don't speak".) Amar's book goes the distance to define, describe and show how one can improve their gull identification skills.

I used to be so-so at gull identification.  Trips to Niagara Falls led by the excellent Alan Wormington (sadly now deceased), went a long way to improving my basic skills.  Other local field trips to a landfill, or taking myself to the nearby Visteon pond when a new or good gull species had been reported secured my basic skills.  In the past several years, however, I have paid no attention to gulls. Amongst many other things in my life, gulls fell to the wayside.  For this review I do not pretend to be a gull expert.  This said, I know a good field guide when I see one.

I always read the Acknowledgements.  Amar Ayyash names an extensive list of contributors for both photos and for identification and writing assistance.  I recognized many of the names.  He saves the best for last and his final paragraph is beautiful.  He dedicates his book to Inaam and Ibrahim who we learn are his parents.  He also dedicates it to Asmaa and Ismail who are, perhaps, his children.  He doesn't say.   Before he goes into each species account, he takes a deep dive into taxonomy, gull topography, feathers, colors, aging and molt and identification being the most lengthy (pages 4-56).  This is all accompanied by detailed photos.  If you only read these pages your understanding and comfort with gull identification will take a giant leap forward.  The rest of the guide (pages 57-501) is a species account of over 40 gulls including subspecies and hybrids with extensive detail. He provides clear and beautiful photographs to reveal each cycle of aging.  Each photograph is accompanied by a number and a corresponding description of what is being highlighted in the photo. True enough, the photos and the print are small, but they need to be to fit.  The thing for me is Amar's writing.  This is no ordinary field guide when it comes to overview, taxonomy, range and identification.  I was also struck by the fact that even defining the range for each species must have been a challenge; for as we know, gulls really do not have geographical boundaries.    

In the podcast listeners learn that Amar's favorite gull is the Franklin's Gull (Leucophaeus pipixcan).  I remember my absolute excitement when I found a Franklin's Gull flying around a small lake in Anchorage, Alaska in June of 2012 and I even got decent identifiable photographs.  I submitted my report and photos to the Alaska Checklist Committee and it was accepted and appeared in their North American Birds summary.  This was perhaps the second best of my birding highlights.  

With this guide I confirmed that my favorite species of gull is one I am unlikely to ever see, Ross's Gull (Rhodostethia rosea).  Of those that I may be able to see there are two.  Sabine's Gull (Xema sabini) (which I may have seen fleetingly, but definitely not confirmed, in Nome, Alaska) and Swallow-tailed Gull (Creagrus furcates) which, if I am fortunate with my travel goals, I may be able to see.

At this stage of my birding career (such as it is or was) I doubt I'll be able to use The Gull Guide to its full capacity.  It doesn't matter; something will come up and I'll need it.  This acknowledged, I'm very proud to have The Gull Guide on my bookshelf.    Even if you and gulls don't speak, this is a must have field guide for any birder.  The detail is extraordinary and the photos and written descriptions are excellent.  It was written by a gull expert who wants you to have the tools to improve your own gull identification skills.  You will appreciate this book for its extensive research to achieve this goal and for the sheer beauty of it.

Addendum added on 12/13/2024

The American Birding Association just published their 2024 annual award winners.  Amar Ayyash won the ABA Robert Ridgeway Award for Outstanding Orinithological Publications.  You may need to be a member to open the link, but if you are reading this chances are you are an ABA member and already know this.

On the ABA 12/05/2024 podcast, for their annual birding book club for the best of 2024, The Gull Guide came up again when Nate Swick placed it in the top spot on his list of five best.  Donna Schulman also placed it in her number three spot and comments extensively on it in the podcast.  I agree with much of what she said, but I still like my review better.  As an aside, The Birds Audubon Missed by Kenn Kaufman was also recognized in this podcast.  While said differently much of what was said about The Birds Audubon Missed was congruent with what I wrote in my review of Kenn Kaufman's book.

Calendar Wars: Is this the best way to fund the causes we care about?

I had planned to write this blog post sometime back in July.  At that time I had received in the mail nine 2025 calendars, from nine different environmental organizations as swag to encourage a monetary donation.  Just in the past month I have received four more 2025 calendars bringing my total for the year to thirteen calendars. There are still two months to go in 2024, but I hope I have received my last calendar.     

How many non-profit charitable organizations are funded is something I have thought about for a long time.  How effective can their strategies possibly be?  Especially when there is so much overlap in many of the organizations.  I have long directed my small bore charitable giving to birding and the environmental organizations that hew to my interests. Any donation I make will always bring a volley of new mailings from other organizations requesting money and sending swag.  There is the swag that is small enough to be included in the envelope; cute greeting cards, Christmas cards, carry bags that allow us to avoid the ubiquitous single use plastic bags.  Some offer swag that you select by checking a box; an umbrella, a shoulder bag, a stuffed animal are things that come immediately to mind.  They are sent separately and arrive about six weeks later.  This kind of swag you can also select not to receive.  

When I was young and learning how to donate money for causes that I cared about, I did not understand the process of donating. It seemed that as soon as my donation left the post office, my mailbox would fill with donation requests from organizations that I had never even heard of, some related to my original donation and others completely unrelated.  In those days I didn't understand that these organizations cooperated with one another and sold the names and addresses of their donors.  These were pre-internet days.  I think of it as snail mail data collection; and yes, this was a long time ago, but this is still how it's done. 

 

If I make even just the smallest donation to any organization, my mailbox becomes flooded with new donation requests.  Often these are from the same organization requesting more money, presumably because my first donation was not large enough.  Everything is always a crisis and the crises never improve.  Birds continue to smash into lighted and reflecting windows.  New suburbs continue to be built on grasslands.  Pesticides continue to kill honeybees, butterflies and other insects.  Invasive species continue to multiple in our waterways. Whales continue to die tangled in fishing nets and from being struck by ships.  Not only does the donation strategy seem wasteful and ineffective, the organizations seem ineffective.  I wonder if organizations consider that most people might not want to receive all of this unwanted clutter, over and over again, for crises that never improve.    

Back in July, I looked up the salary information of CEOs for many of these organizations.  I've since lost my notes, but from memory I recall that most salaries were higher than $200,000, some much higher, and one or two even exceeded a million dollars.  (Of note, one climate change organization's CEO received the astonishingly low salary of about $25,000.)   So, if the CEOs are receiving this level of salary and other perks, how much money is actually being directed to the effort the organization purports to support - whether it is birds, animals, the ocean, clean air and water, habitat preservation, etc.?  

About fifteen years ago I traveled to England to visit friends I had not seen in a very long time.  They indulged me completely and took me to several Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSBP) sanctuaries and even joined me in the activity of birding and seemed to enjoy themselves, although I don't think they carried on after I returned home.  We birded the RSPB sanctuaries in Norfolk and took a car trip to Wales. While in Wales we visited Skomer Island (wind direction made landing the boat unsafe to disembark) and then Ramsey Island. Both were marvelous experiences.  On Ramsey Island there was a table manned by a couple of young people to encourage others to join the RSPB.  (Both Skomer and Ramsey islands and others are RSPB sanctuaries.)  I thought why not, and used my credit card to pay the small fee.  I have been a member ever since.  The annual membership includes my membership card and a card for a visitor to accompany me on a sanctuary visit, a bi-monthly journal which covers endeavors throughout the whole United Kingdom.  I've never been offered swag, there are no follow-up requests to give more money and the membership fee is the fee - not a selection of choices going from low to high.  Most importantly, the efforts of the RSBP seem all-inclusive. The RSPB does, for a much smaller country of course, what ten or more such organizations say they do in the United States.  The RSPB is laser focused on protecting species, preserving and expanding habitat, and educating and engaging the UK citizenry.  

I guess it's just the American way.  Big country, big worries, muddled politics, and it all requires a separate organization to address the wide variety of problems, all of which require a lot of money from wherever they can get it.  They play upon our interests and our guilt.  It my case this occasionally works.  It's not just environmental organizations. This seems to be how money is raised by organizations of all kinds in the United States.  I've been tangled in this process of fund raising for at least the past 40 years.  It must be working.

Don't get me wrong.  I care deeply about the environmental issues that impact the human and non-human species who we share our planet with.  I donate.  But, I want my donation to count for that cause.  I don't see where watered down donations are achieving their purported impact. Why not consolidate our efforts so that our money and voices are united behind collective causes and actions.  Sure, there would be fewer CEOs with their personal interests making very nice salaries. But, perhaps a lights off campaign during spring and fall migrations might actually happen. Or, any of the other myriad quandaries that our disconnected organizations are trying to address might actually stand of chance of being solved, or at least improved.  

I'm not sure what to do with all of these calendars.  I'll probably give them away to family and friends.  The irony is that many people no longer even use wall-hanging calendars.  The nice photos are the main attraction.  I've kept the Christmas cards I recently received and will send them to friends at the holidays.  But I'm sure of one thing.  All this unnecessary paper, all this clutter, all this junk!  We need a better way to fund and address the issues, environmental and others, that we care about. 

 

Addendum added on Sunday, November 3rd, 2024

Yesterday I listened to the November 2nd, 2024 episode 'The Interview":  Peter Singer Wants to Shatter Your Moral Complacency.   Unfortunately, the New York Times now has a paywall for all of their media.  But, if I have understood this new policy correctly, you can still listen to a current episode free of charge, but will not be able to access archived episodes.  (The problem with this is that The Interview is the weekend edition of the The Daily and their episodes are published daily.  Doesn't allow much time.)  

While not directly related to the argument I am making in this blog post, there are still good connections Peter Singer is making with his philosophical arguments.  I am thinking here of where he speaks about making your donation(s) count.  The interviewer tries to get Pete Singer with a couple of gotcha questions, but overall the interview is quite good and Pete Singer is a calm and thoughtful man.  I hope you can find a way to listen or read. 

Book Review: Dragonflies of North America

Arrived in my mailbox today!

Dragonflies of North America, Written and illustrated by Ed Lam, published by Princeton University Press, 2024 and hot off the press.

Introduction

Not since I first laid eyes on David Allen Sibley's illustrated field guide, The Sibley Field Guide to Birds (2003), have I been as excited to see a new illustrated field guide as I have with Ed Lam's field guide Dragonflies of North America just out from Princeton Field Guides. Thus far I've only cracked the cover and have thumbed through the pages, but it's a gem.

All summer long I have struggled with the identification of many of the new dragonflies I saw and photographed having only photographic guides for making an identification.  As good as some of the photographs are, many are just as poor.  I kept thinking that I [we] need better tools for dragonfly ID. For odonate experts and enthusiasts who can net dragonflies this is not a concern with the same urgency.  But I don't net dragonflies and, for a variety of reasons, am unlikely to gain much skill at this.  I rely upon my eyesight (sometimes poor), binocular viewing and my photographs.  Overall I think I do a pretty good job with the limitations I have, but this book should help throw open the door.

For now, this is all I have time to write, but more to come when I have had a chance to sit with the book for awhile.  I include a couple of sample page photos.

Continuing review on Sunday, October 20, 2024

As with any good field guide, Dragonflies of North America begins with an introduction followed by the science, anatomy, life cycles and more (pages 6-28).  Since dragonfly science is significantly different than that of other insect species, this is the essential starting point. Each family also begins with its own description before going into each species specific illustrations included in the family.  All of this is standard for any field guide and it's thorough and complete here.  

At 446 pages, Ed Lam has published a serious book.  In this sense it rivals Dennis Paulson's, by now well-known to all odonate enthusiasts, Dragonflies and Damselflies of the West (2009) and East (2011) odonate guides.  The first caveats needed: Paulson's guides include all three of the Zygoptera families.  On the other hand, Ed Lam's new guide is a complete guide for all of North America's Anisoptera families in a single volume.  Otherwise, the new Dragonflies of North America has the same amount of heft.  I would be uncomfortable, for example, carrying it around in my backpack or reluctant to pack it in my airline carry-on bag.

In his guides, Paulson's photos are small and essentially pre-digital, but he makes up for this with detailed written descriptions of each species.  Generally, the photos are not suitable for identification.  For this reason I prefer to describe Paulson's books as odonate guides and not field guides.  This reminds me, too, of A Naturalist's Guide to the Odonata of Ohio, by McShaffrey, Spring and McCormac (2024), with mostly two to three largish photos of each species per page which may be reasonable for some straightforward odonate identification, but excellent maps and write-ups on the opposite side of the page.  (Ohio has a lot of odonate species, so this is also an excellent guide for the middle eastern part of the US).

As the above page photos reveal, Ed Lam's guide is heavy on illustration and is designed for identification.  As far as I know, (and I am by no means an expert on the variety of odonate guides available ), this is the first fully illustrated field guide.  The range maps are small and the write-ups are brief; in this sense, more like a bird field guide.  

But, back to the illustrations.  Again, for a different comparison, in the Kaufman Field Guide to Butterflies of North America (2003), all of the images began as photographs.  How did Lam draw all of these dragonfly illustrations?  Dragonflies are so complex; their structure, physical features, eyes and wings are astonishingly intricate.  The illustrations have an almost AI-assisted appearance to them.  Don't get me wrong, this is definitely not a criticism.  We need this to see the field marks. Lam uses the same technique for pointing out field marks to notice and look for - male cerci with downward tips, yellow markings nearly meet at top, yellow marking separated at top, femurs partially yellow, tibiae black - are random examples.  This is a common feature of all odonate field guides - often with arrows and circles - but Lam uses clear verbal descriptors and lines lead to the area being described.  Lam offers more descriptors than are typically found in other guides.

If I have one negative observation - and I don't see this is the fault of Ed Lam, the illustrator - many of the illustrations do not reveal the vividness of the colors of many species.  If this is so, I would consider it to be a printing issue.  (I recall making a similar observation with some bird species in David Allen Sibley's second edition Guide to Birds (2014) where the color of some species appeared to be "muddy".)  I am not going to harp on this point.  Many experts and enthusiasts may disagree saying that Lam's illustrations are true to how the dragonfly looks in the hand, unimpacted by the dazzle of the sun or shimmer of the water or shadow of the foliage.

Ed Lam closes his field guide with In-Hand Characters (393-436) with extraordinarily large and detailed black and white renderings of those field marks that are essential for accurate identification of some family and species of dragonflies.  This is something that all novices to the identification of odonates find out, usually with egg on our faces, when we learn that if the dragonfly was not netted and the genitalia not inspected with a magnifier; well, you cannot say it is this or that.  Many species in the Sympetrum group come quickly to mind.  This brings me back to what I wrote in my introduction about being unskilled at netting dragonflies.  This is a real handicap and it is worth taking the effort needed to improve this skill.  Photographs are fine for perching dragonflies; but one will be thwarted by those that fall into the flyer category.  True enough (depending upon the quality of your optics), many species can be photographed in flight; Prince Baskettail and Common Green darner come to mind.  But, while the dragonfly is identifiable, it is mostly not a photo that you will want to brag about. It is the flyers, as well as damselflies (not covered in this guide) that are going to present the identification challenges, and having them in hand and learning to identify by using Lam's In-Hand Characters will be critical for advancing beyond the novice class of dragonfly identification.  I'm still in the novice class.   

Ed Lam also wrote the illustrated guide Damselflies of the Northeast : A Guide to the Species of Eastern Canada & the Northeastern United States (2004) published by Biodiversity Books. This guide can be purchased used from an Amazon dealer for $2,401.11!  A brief on-line search suggests that Biodiversity Books is no longer active and there may be copyright issues that block re-publication.  The opening sentences of one Amazon reviewer, fortunate enough to have purchased this book at its original publishing and going by the name of X Man states, "As a life long active birder, I am pretty familiar with field guides in general. This one is simply a masterpiece and not only is this the best field guide for damselflies, I think it may be the best field guide of any kind I have ever seen." Now that's a 5 star review! After reviewing Dragonflies of North America I'm inclined to agree. Putting it to the test next summer is going to be fun. 

Just as Sibley produced his East and West birding guides, perhaps Ed Lam's next project will be a new Damselflies of North America illustrated guide.  That would be amazing.

Spider anyone?

Early Saturday morning, I left my house to walk to a neighbor's and something caught my eye against the wall of my garage.  I stopped. Ahhh, a spider.  It was somehow attached by a single thread of webbing.  I took these three photos with my iPhone and left it alone.  

 

Later I entered the photos in iNaturalist and the mostly likely ID was Cross Orb Weaver (Araneus diadematus) spider.  Further on-line searching revealed that there are cross orb weaver spiders of many appearances.  The photos most closely match Araneus diadematus.  The white cross on this spider is easily apparent on the top half of the bottom end. There is also a smaller, dark cross just above the white cross on the top end.  I don't know spider anatomy to describe it better.  Click on the photo to enlarge and you will easily see this.  Middle photo is the best focused.

The spider finally got to move away from the thread that was holding it.  I think, however, it may have met its demise in other spidery-like webs near the ground of my garage.

  

I always need to remember to crop iPhone photos to make them compatible with a site like Google blogger.

Addendum 10/10/2024:

On a gentler note, and probably more appealing to most, I add this photo of a Common Buckeye (Junonia coenia) butterfly seen on the sidewalk of my urban neighborhood on 10/08.  What a beauty!  Too bad the shadows of the overhanging grasses are over it. 

Black-billed Magpie

At the end of September I went to a wedding in Boulder, Colorado. Remarkably this was my first ever visit to Colorado.  I thought I would see so many birds.  Let's see:  I saw American Robin, American Crow, Blue Jay, Stellar's Jay (maybe) flying over, Black-capped Chickadee, Northern (red-shafted) Flicker, Belted Kingfisher (heard, not seen), maybe Mountain Chickadee (it was there, then it wasn't), silhouetted Pygmy Nuthatch and, of course, House Finch.  Oh, and Wild Turkeys (many) walking through the woods up nearer to the Flatiron peaks.  As far as I can recall, this was the entirety of my list.  Except, of course, the ever present Black-billed Magpie (Pica hudsonia).  

The photos below were taken on Sunday morning while I was walking through a neighborhood along College Street.  The evidence of Saturday night partying was everywhere.  The magpie in these photos is not looking in the right place for discarded party snacks, but this is a super smart bird - both in appearance and cunning.   

Of course, there were other birds I would have liked to see (Lewis's Woodpecker!), but happy to have these magpie photos.