Book Review - Inshore Fishes of Britain and Ireland

“An unexpected topic for Another Bird Blog”, regular readers might say, a review of Inshore Fishes of Britain and Ireland, a field guide to fish. A soon to be released book from Wild Nature Press via Princeton (25 April). 

Inshore Fishes of Britain and Ireland - Princeton

Let me explain. I live a two minute drive from the Lancashire coast, the wonderfully species rich ecosystem of North West England known as Morecambe Bay, where man, birds, animals and fish live together, often in competition, very frequently as prey and predator. 

The historic and once major fishing town of Fleetwood is a short ferry journey across the mouth of Morecambe Bay via The River Wyre, a focal point of the geographical area. Hereabouts, many people retain an affinity to what is today a mostly lost industry.  The important source of employment declined during the 'cod wars' of the 1970s when Iceland restricted how much fish could be caught in its waters. Later in the 1990s many fishermen sold their boats off under a UK government and EU led decommissioning scheme. And thereafter Fleetwood lost its main raison d'être. 

I will own up now; I like to eat fish. Fish is a rich source of protein filled with omega-3 fatty acids and vitamins such as D and B. Fish is rich in calcium and phosphorus and a great source of minerals, such as iron, zinc, iodine, magnesium, and potassium. 

My pal Jamie the Fishmonger has skills acquired via his Fleetwood family where he learnt the trade of knowing about the buying, selling and the processing of many sea foods.  He can tell me how good a fish will eat by glancing at the colour of the flesh or feeling the thickness of the skin. He knows about fish where I know the bare bones; he educates me about his iced display of treasure from the deep while filleting a bright eyed plaice in the blink of an eye. 

When Princeton floated Inshore Fishes of Britain and Ireland my naturally enquiring mind came into play whereby a landlubber’s curiosity might learn a little about the 400 or more species of fish which surround UK shores. After a quick shuffle of the pages, the many photos and the explanatory illustrations I just knew I had to share this gem of a book with followers of Another Bird Blog, so here it is. 

Unlike birds and mammals, fish in their live state are not obvious or easily accessible to land based observation but much more likely to be seen and studied by divers and snorkellers who can more easily identify and record these fast moving animals underwater. 

The authors of Inshore Fishes, Lin Baldock and Frances Dipper have a wealth of expertise and worldwide experience of  studying marine life through diving expeditions in the UK, Canada, Australia, the Middle East and Asia. As one who paddled in the Red Sea while surrounded by myriad exotic fish I remain in awe of Lin Baldock’s 4,000+ dives.  At Page 8 the authors acknowledge more than seventy  contributors who provided photographs, illustrations, previously unpublished information and other content that made this overdue and unique book possible. 

A glance at “Contents” shows the diversity, breadth of the species and the information to be found in this delightful and educational book of a succinct 288 pages.  

Inshore Fishes of Britain and Ireland - Princeton

“How to Use This Book” is essential reading to understand that unusually shaped fish can change both colour, shape and even sex, but that Habitat is equally important for fish identification as it is for bird and animal ID. 

The why and how of underwater photography points out the potential pitfalls and likely delights of portraying a pipefish or flashing to a flounder while showing many fine examples by way of e.g. Leopard-spotted Goby, a Starry Smoothound, a Norwegian Topknot or an Angelshark in their natural environments.

Inshore Fishes of Britain and Ireland - Princeton

Inshore Fishes of Britain and Ireland - Princeton

And if you thought that some birds are pretty good at hiding away through cryptic plumage take a look at the photographs of a number of species of flat fish like brill, turbot and scaldfish. Such beautiful and unique creatures have the means to become motionless and invisible to all but the sharpest eyes.

Inshore Fishes of Britain and Ireland - Princeton

Inshore Fishes of Britain and Ireland - Princeton

 Some pages emphasise key identification features and possible confusion species and also include a “confidence guide” distinguishing between easily recognisable species and those requiring closer examination. It’s a feature that could be put to good use in bird guides for novice birders when considering recent faux pas I witnessed - Short-eared Owl v Barn Owl or Wood Warbler v Willow Warbler, occasions when the use of a field guide would have saved embarrassment. 

The species’ accounts at pages 35-273 make for truly fascinating and compulsive reading in their descriptions and explanations of the remarkable lifestyles and life histories of these barely known creatures, many of which were completely unknown to me. 

There are of course a number of UK species which can sting, electrocute or otherwise harm an unwary diver - the rays, sharks, scorpion fish, or the venomous weevers.  Yet others like the wrasse family live close to the sea bed where they can be rare or rarely seen. I learnt that the Black Seabream, a protogynous hermaphrodite, bulldozes a nest on the ocean floor for the female and that this extraordinary behaviour has been the subject of a seven year study along the Dorset coast. 

With Inshore Fishes and following on from a number of very bulky “field guides” we appear to have returned to a more manageable size of guide at a pocket sized 5.88 x 8.25 inches of minimal weight and mass. The colour coded on-page icons, pointers and illustrations work a treat. The book is concise, compact, practical and extremely user friendly. Hooray. 

Inshore Fishes is published in association with the UK Marine Conservation Society, a joint imitative that makes an invaluable contribution to the series of marine photographic titles of Seasearch, a species recording project for volunteer sports divers. 

Inshore Fishes of Britain and Ireland - Princeton

Price: $27.95/£22.00 

ISBN: 9780691249018  

Published (US):Aug 1, 2023

Published (UK):Apr 25, 2023 

Copyright:2023 

Pages: 288 

Size: 5.88 x 8.25 in 

Here is a fine book that will appeal to the growing band of divers and marine conservationists who explore the coast of Britain. I imagine that many fishermen will be drawn to read this book, also part time sea anglers or those inshore hobby fishermen who set off in small boats from towns and villages around all parts of Britain and Ireland. In the book they will surely find much to interest, excite and educate. 

Linking this weekend to Eileen's Saturday Blog and Anni in Texas.

In the Footsteps of Audubon

Here as promised is a review of a book due for release on November 1st 2022 - In the Footsteps of Audubon by Denis Clavreul. This is a Princeton publication. 

In the Footsteps of Audubon - Princeton

Denis Clavreul is a French watercolourist, wildlife artist, and biologist whose celebrated works have been exhibited around the world. He is the author and illustrator of many books, including Dreaming of Africa and Pour une Loire vivante (That the Loire may live). 

https://www.denisclavreul.com/peintures-fraiches.asp

John James Audubon (1785 - 1851) is held in such high regard as a naturalist/ornithologist/painter and author that he is known simply by the surname of Audubon. 

Everyone knows of Audubon, not least me. Audubon’s stunning, stylistic, painstakingly detailed and dramatic drawings became a major inspiration in my early days of discovering birds. 

Audubon’s own journey began in France over two hundred years ago with his childhood in France and an early affinity for birds and natural history in its many forms. In 1803 his father obtained a false passport so that Jean-Jacques Audubon could go to the United States to avoid conscription in the Napoleonic Wars. At eighteen years old Jean-Jacques boarded a ship and changed his name to the anglicised form John James Audubon. 

As a young man Audubon travelled the Americas where he learned the crafts that would eventually make him famous. The book traces one such journey via Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Louisiana, Las Floridas (Florida), Labrador, Missouri and to the end of the journey in New York City. In those days the population of the young United States was around five million people. There were no paved roads, no automobiles, no electric lights, no cameras or binoculars, and no widely available books about birds. 

Throughout the journey the young Audubon practiced and perfected his artistic skills and became a self-taught ornithologist of repute. His pictorial record - The Birds of America, 1827 and 1838, stands as a colossal achievement in American art that will never be bettered. 

Birds of America

“In the Footsteps” follows the same route that Audubon took through the States of America with a chapter devoted to each leg of a journey some 200 years before. 

In the Footsteps of Audubon - Princeton

Two hundred and fifty of Clavreul’s deceptively modest, often impressionistic sketches and watercolours of birds, animals, people, plants and landscapes appear throughout the pages where they mingle with revealing selections from Audubon’s journals and a number of his paintings e.g. the simply stunning Great Egret, the Crested Caracaras or the Gannets. 

 

In the Footsteps of Audubon - Princeton

 “The weather was fine; all around me was as fresh and blooming as if it had just issued from the bosom of Nature. Although well moccasined, I moved slowly along attracted by the brilliancy of the flowers, and the gambols of the fawns along their dams, to all appearance as thoughtless of danger as I felt myself.” 

Audubon’s words make a knowing and comfortable juxtaposition of words and images that fit with Clavreul’s easy, relaxed style of descriptive writing. I felt that my journey through America and Audubon’s past was made all the better by being in the company of an agreeable, knowledgeable and sympathetic companion. 

Along the journey there are people who live with nature, many of them passionately engaged in preserving it. We encounter bird banders in Louisiana, devoted birders in Central Park, Florida & Quebec and ranchers in Missouri; just a few of the locations where Clavreul’s delightful sketches and paintings bring words and history to life. We see the natural world as Audubon saw it but with eyes and ideas of today. 

Banders in Louisiana - In the Footsteps of Audubon - Princeton

“The Night Hawks were skimming over and around me, attracted by the buzzing wings of beetles which form their food, and the distant howling of wolves gave me some hope that I should soon arrive at the skirts of some woodlands.” 

In the Footsteps of Audubon - Princeton

In the Footsteps of Audubon - Princeton

In the Footsteps of Audubon - Princeton

I must mention that the book is translated from the original French into English. The translator Martha Le Cars deserves a special mention for the sensitive, seamless and highly readable result. 

In the Footsteps of Audubon, a book in landscape format, will probably not appeal to the average birder. However, I am certain it is one that will find a home with students of bird and natural history art, travellers, writers, and indeed anyone who simply loves books for the joy they bring in these troubled times. 

I thoroughly recommend it as one that would make a thoughtful gift for a young aspiring writer or artist, someone in the mould of young John James perhaps? 

This is a book that I quickly grew to love and one I would like to keep but with bulging bookshelves I am stuck for space. However I have a better, more useful idea. I will donate this delightful book to my granddaughter’s school though their art department, where I hope it will become a tool for talk, discussion and projects, perhaps even an inspiration to one or more budding artists or writers. 

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691237688/in-the-footsteps-of-audubon 

$39.95 / £30.00 

ISBN: 9780691237688 

Published: Nov 1, 2022 

Copyright: 2022 

Pages: 256 

Size: 11.75 x 9.5 in. 

Illustrations: 272 colour 

Linking this weekend to Eileen's Blogspot and Anni in Texas.

Review - The Birds of New Jersey

The rain batted down against the bedroom window once more this morning. Add to this the seemingly ever present gusts from the west and it seemed a good time to postpone checking Barn Swallow nests until tomorrow but instead delve into a book recently received for review by Another Bird Blog.

The Birds of New Jersey

Readers from North America especially those that bird on the East Coast, will be pleased to hear that the book is the awaited “The Birds of New Jersey – Status and Distribution” by William J Boyle Jr, a birder of 40+ years and author of "A Guide to Bird Finding in New Jersey".

Of course I know where New Jersey is and I recognise it includes the birding sites of Sandy Hook and Turkey Point and the celebrated migration hot-spot of Cape May, where both US and UK birders/banders make pilgrimages. But until I looked in “Wiki” I didn’t realise the state of New Jersey in only about 70 miles wide and 170 miles from top to bottom; all the more reason to rejoice in the 450 + species recorded here in such a relatively small state. A major reason for the huge number and variety of species here is that as far as a bird is concerned New Jersey has a wide variety of habitats in a geographically ideal location whether they reside permanently, seasonally, or just make stop-over visits during migration time.

So this book is not simply another field guide to add to the many already out there, it is firstly a guide to the status and distribution of the more than 450 bird species recorded in the state of New Jersey in the last 200 years. Until now there has been no single, comprehensive and readily available guide out there for birders and naturalists, so as well as the 200 year history, this book draws from the many publications and bird journals of more recent years. Naturally enough in this the age of the Internet, Boyle’s book includes records from online reporting services like eBird, New Jersey Rare Bird Alert and the Cape May Birding Hotline, so it is bang up to date.

I am hugely impressed by this book. It is very well written, clear and concise, nicely laid out and thorough in presentation. By the time I had studied it well I realised that it was as the back cover blurb had claimed, “authoritative”. The 300 pages contain species accounts that describe the preferred habitat and relative abundance of each species as well as detailed, colour coded and very precise maps, interspersed with some really excellent and varied photographs that break the text into readable chunks. Shame about a distant and blurred but the actual Northern Lapwing photograph, the second ever record of Vanellus vanellus in New Jersey, and if only William had asked I would have emailed him a few pics of Lapwings from Pilling!

The Birds of New Jersey
The Birds of New Jersey

I found the terminology used for Status and Distribution especially effective and useful, with a couple of extra terms I had not seen before in this type of book. Those two are “Irregular” - species whose occurrence is unpredictable, and “Local” - typically found only in specific habitats and areas within a particular region. If only field guides could include such fine detail it would surely help birders unfamiliar with a particular place to find birds, or indeed help new birders to sort out the likelihood of the bird’s occurrence in the first place? This led me to think that anyone who birds regularly in New Jersey or neighbouring states should not only study this book in depth but also keep it side by side with their standard field guide to Eastern North America.

The Birds of New Jersey

The final 13 pages of the book contain a helpful and extensive bibliography for readers interested in pursuing and learning more about the birds and natural history of New Jersey.

To sum up, “The Birds of New Jersey” is an object lesson in how to produce a book of this type. It is well researched, succinct but detailed, easily accessible and extremely logical in the arrangement of the information. The book also lives up to the quality of print, colour and paper that we expect of a Princeton product.

Finally, another few facts about New Jersey: Its per-capita income is the third highest in the United States and New Jersey also has the highest percentage of millionaire households. So there are a few people who don’t have to worry about the cost of this splendid book, not that anyone should at the bargain price of $24.95 or £16.95 from Princeton University Press.