Rare and Elusive Birds of North America

by William Burt (Photographer)

For sixteen years, author and photographer William Burt has been on an uncommon mission. Every spring and summer since 1984, he has been in pursuit of the toughest of twenty of the least known, almost mythically elusive North American birds. Burt spent weeks in the field at a time, employing his own hand-built equipment and often revisiting sites, year after year in certain cases, to get the pictures he wanted. The end result is this collection of stunning photographs of these birds in the wild and the engaging stories behind capturing the images. This book contains over fifty remarkable photographs of these camera-shy birds. Additionally, it contains an appendix of thumbnail sketches about each of the birds featured in the where they can be found, their markings, and other unique characteristics. Rare and elusive Birds of North America is a wonderful addition to the libraries of serious and armchair birders alike.

Genres: Biology, Birds

208 pages, Hardcover

First published October 19, 2001

Reviews

[David Robertson · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Rare and Elusive Birds of North America” is a triumph. The images are superb, and the writing to accompany the images is insightful and intriguing. Most of the 20 birds featured in this book are denizens of difficult terrain--swamps, bogs, dense thickets, and endless, featureless prairie grasslands—making capturing images of them all the more challenging. Most of the images were captured in the dead of night when the birds were on nests; as he explains, author and photographer William Burt had very little other choice because the birds are so good at eluding detection. Of course, the book is also somewhat depressing because so many of these birds’ “marginal” habitats have been cleared for development or agriculture, and the birds are far less numerous than they once were. Anyone interested in natural history (not just bird ecology), ornithology, and photography should find this book fascinating.