Book Review - The Birds of Cuba - BOC Checklist Series: 26

 

     I count myself among the most fortunate of men to have been afforded the opportunity to go birding in Cuba on three different occasions. Indeed, I hope to do it again.

     Upon being notified that a new Annotated Checklist was in the works, I anxiously awaited its completion. Now I have it in front of me on my desk.

     It is all that I could have hoped for and more. From the cover, with its stunning image of a Bee Hummingbird, by the talented Cuban artist, Alvaro de Jesús, to the very last page, indeed to the back cover, this work informs, educates and pleases.

     I find the scholarship admirable, and the annotated checklist of the birds is only part of it. The introduction leads us to a history of ornithology in Cuba. Doubtless there are those who knew much of this, but I suspect that the majority, like me, were woefully ignorant, and will benefit greatly from this retrospective into those who have gone before. As in all things, the past sets the stage for the present.

     There is a comprehensive section on geology and geography, vegetation and habitats, wetlands and other aquatic communities, zoogeography, with a fascinating discussion of bird colonisation, endemism and island affinities. Various tables are skillfully used to elucidate the text and to present information in a pleasingly readable format. 

     There is even extensive coverage of that rarest of treasures, Cuban bird fossils, and the role they have played in understanding the current avifauna of this treasured island, the largest in the Caribbean.

    Migration, Breeding, and perhaps most importantly of all, Conservation, all receive attention in the context of Cuban ornithology.

     Observers and collectors are given their due, followed by an instructive section, entitled Presentation of the Species Accounts. 

     In all, 105 pages, jam-packed with information, enable us to better understand, appreciate and interpret the avifauna of Cuba, before getting to a single species!

     What then follows is a marvelous annotated list of all the birds, extant and extinct, with copious notes, sources, attribution, taxonomy and breeding status. It is a unique source of pleasure to read each account and relate it back to one's own experiences, all the while longing for more.

     There springs to mind great memories of sensual warmth, the pleasure of time spent with Cubans, walks through tropical forests, swatting mosquitoes in swamps while admiring spoonbills and flamingoes, being moved almost to tears at one's first Cuban Tody, marvelling at a pair of Fernandina's Flickers jousting in the legendary Ciénaga de Zapata, and seeing Cuban Trogons all around.

     The book ends with a gazetteer of Cuban place names, a list of Cuban endemics, a list of plant names used in the text, and a formidable bibliography. 

     Having spent much time burrowing into the pages of this book, there is more burrowing to be done. Without question, this is THE work on Cuban ornithology, furnishing far more information than even a high quality field guide could do.

     I cannot imagine that anyone with even a passing interest in Cuban ornithology would not wish to have a copy of this book, and for anyone contemplating a trip there to observe or study birds, it would be sheer folly to go without it.

The Birds of Cuba - An Annotated Checklist

Arturo Kirkconnell, Guy M. Kirwan, Orlando H. Garrido, Andy D. Mitchell and James W. Wiley

Softcover - 472 pages - 32 pages of full colour illustrations - maps, charts, tables

ISBN 9780952288671   24 x 16cm

British Ornithologists' Club, Tring, United Kingdom