Book Review: The Ghost with Trembling Wings

I picked up The Ghost with Trembling Wings: Science, Wishful Thinking and the Search for Lost Species more out of habit than anything else. I've made it a habit to read any book by Scott Weidensaul. This is a very good habit. 

I knew little more than the title but it turns out the book was so much more than I expected. Silly me. As I should have expected, Weidensaul isn't content to sit in his chair at home surfing the web for information and then musing academic about lost species. This book is about the human drive to get out there and look. 

Weidensaul travels the globe and we get to come along. I admit a bit of a soft spot for Cryptozoology, the search for animals that may or may not exist. I teach a Cryptozoology summer camp and my bookshelves at home hold such treasures as Cryptozoology A To Z by Loren Coleman, The Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology by Michael Newton and even classics such as On the Track of Unknown Animals by Bernard Heuvelmans and Animal Treasure by Ivan T. Sanderson.

Weidensaul treks across the English countryside looking for big cats, he prowls Tasmania looking for the Thylacine, he takes his turn looking for the Ivory Billed Woodpecker. 

Unlike a simple travelogue or a blinded-by-faith cryptozoology tract, Weidensaul examines human nature to try to suss out why it is we are so obsessed with species on the edge and species that elude our knowledge. Weidensaul's writing style shines through in this gem of a book. I found myself lost in his descriptions. I trudged though the cerrado savanna of South America with sweat bees driving me crazy while we looked for the Cone-billed Tanager. I hiked next to him in the wilderness of Tasmania as he pointed out trees and birds and everything except a tasmanian tiger. He is a gifted writer and this is one of his most adventurous books. When I finished, I was left wanting nothing short of more time in the woods, prairies, savannas, deserts and jungles of the world armed with binoculars and hope.

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Swainson's Thrush Migration

I taught a fall migration class today at work and wanted to look up some information about migrating Swainson's Thrushes for the class. I stumbled upon this interesting scientific paper from 2002 about the genetic connection between migration patterns in Swainson's Thrushes and the expansion of their range in the late pleistocene. Not as the crow flies: a historical explanation for circuitous migration in Swainson's thrush (Catharus ustulatus) is thankfully available as a free pdf.

Be forewarned, the paper contains bodice ripping passages such as, "To survey the distribution of these clades in migrating and overwintering birds, we amplified the 800 bp fragment of control region using the primers described above and used restriction enzyme Sfc I to assay a variable site in which cleavage is diagnostic of the coastal clade. Five microlitres of the digest reaction were electrophoresed on an 6% polyacrylamide gel and restriction fragments were stained with thidium bromide and visualized under ultraviolet light." Try to control yourselves people, I know this is exciting stuff.

While the section on methodology may not be your cup of tea, the conclusions are fascinating. The authors conclude that in the late pleistocene the Swainson's Thrush population was divided into two refugia as glaciation wiped out habitat in the center of the continent. These two populations remain relatively distinct today as the coastal (western) population and the continental (eastern) population The eastern population eventually spread north-westward as suitable boreal forest habitat emerged post-glaciation. When it comes time to migrate south, the continental population, which has spread as far wet as Alaska, follows their genetic heritage and first flies thousands of miles east to get back to their ancestral grounds before turning and heading south. The birds essentially re-trace their ancestral expansion route. This points to a strong genetic component to migration.

Many similar findings are discussed in Scott Weidensaul's excellent book on migration, Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere With Migratory Birds.

~Kirk

(photo credit: US NPS)

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Book Review: Return to Wild America

Revisiting the landmark 1955 book, Wild America, written by Roger Tory Peterson and James Fisher would seem to be at once an exhilarating journey across both the continent and time but it is also a daunting task. Author Scott Weidensaul proves it to be both but also shows that he is up to the challenge in Return to Wild America: A Yearlong Search for the Continent's Natural Soul.

I’d personally love to take the challenge of following in their footsteps and take on the task of revisiting the sites they saw but I’d not do it lightly. Fisher and Peterson took on an epic 30,000 mile journey and wrote about it in details that have made generations of naturalists drool and turn into fiendish page turners into the wee hours of the night, eventually dreaming of far away places. Weidensaul has accomplished the same task. I spent many evenings tucked into a warm bed with dry arctic air cascading down from the north as I read with rapt attention about the changes that have occurred to the wild lands of our country.

Weidensaul doesn’t attempt to follow the exact course of the original book. Some of the locations no longer exist and time has shown that while they visited some spectacular locations, had they traveled a few miles away from their mapped locations, even greater treasures awaited. By following Peterson and Fishers general course but straying a bit from the path, Weidensaul is able to visit a few places unknown to Peterson and Fisher and he is able take a barometer reading on the true state of today’s Wild America.

The book is written beautifully with the same attention to detail that draws fellow naturalists into a rich landscape. When Weidensaul sits atop a rock outcropping on the Olympic peninsula listening to marmots whistle as they watch the same adult golden eagle he watches, his descriptive writing style makes us feel like we are right beside him taking part in both his experience and a discussion about the landscape.

Some nature writers record only the journey, some discuss only the land, some merely tally flora and fauna and some discuss only the philosophical meaning of what they see. Too often, natural history travelogue books focus on just one of these and they become tiring lists of species or read like a dry itinerary. Weidensaul has avoided all of these traps and seamlessly weaves together the history of the land, observations from the original Wild America book, descriptions of species and their habits as well as the stunning landscapes he explores along the journey. He also spices up his writing with a dry wit that brings together a tight package of writing that is sure to please.

While I enjoyed the book immensely, I do still find myself wondering about those places that Weidensaul didn’t visit on his re-created tour. That’s part of the magic of reading about all there is for a naturalist to see on our enormous continent. Like the naturalists before me, I’ll have to hop in the car, hope the gasoline holds out a few more miles and explore our wild America.

~Kirk

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