Top 100 Birding Sites of the World

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2009:

 

 

Top 100 Birding Sites of the World

by Dominic Couzens

Univ. of Calif. Press (2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94704-1012), 2008.

320 pages, illustrated. $45.00.

 

 

Just a year after publication of the first edition of Dominic

Couzens' Top 100 Birding Sites of the World, now reprinted in an

expanded edition, climatic change has transformed three of the ten I

have been fortunate enough to visit.

Keoladeo Ghana National Park at Bharatpur, India, is badly

depleted by drought, though the Indian government hopes to restore

it by piping in water.

The Florida Everglades, also drying out, are now home to

increasingly abundant feral pythons. The pythons prey upon the

resident alligators, who are the major predators of Everglades

wading birds. Since big snakes have consumed crocodilians in most

crocodilians habitat for the past hundred million years, the only

surprise is that big snakes of some sort didn't reach the Everglades

sooner.

The Olympic Peninsula, just a ferry boat ride from here, is

gaining bird species due to global warming. Of 305 North American

bird species, 177 now winter farther north than they did in 1968,

according to the National Audubon Society.

Though habitats evolve, most of Couzens' top 100 birding

sites are likely to remain spectacular for birders regardless of

changes in the species lists they host.

" My first response after reading Top 100 Birding Sites of the

World, " testifies back cover blurb author John T. Rotenberry, " was

to reach for the phone and start booking tours to go see birds. "

Probably most readers of this wishbook will have a similar

impulse, but most will never in a lifetime save the spare change or

flyer miles to visit more than a few dozen of Couzens' top 100,

distributed as they are among seven continents and several remote

Pacific islands. Only a few are close enough together to

conveniently visit on the same trip.

Enough are easily accessible, however, to enable almost any

reader to visit a few, enhancing imagination of what the rest must

be like. --Merritt Clifton

 

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

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