Book Signing Information:

THE AMERICAN BIRD CONSERVANCY'S FIELD GUIDE TO ALL THE BIRDS IN
NORTH AMERICA

Tour Dates for George Fenwick, President of the ABC

April 18 -- Austin, TX
(tie-ins with Great Texas Birding Classic, Austin, April 19-27)

April 21 -- Houston TX

April 22 (Earth Day) -- Denver, CO

April 23 -- Tucson, AZ

April 24 -- San Francisco, CA

April 25 -- Seattle, WA
(tie-ins with Gray's Harbor Shorebird Festival, Montesano, April
26-27)

April 28-29 -- Washington, DC

***

May 5 -- Atlanta, GA

May 6 -- Chicago, IL

May 7 -- Boston, MA

May 8 -- New York, NY

May 9 (International Migratory Bird Day) -- Cape May, NJ
(tie-ins with the World Series of Birding, May 10)



Book Information/Press Release:

THE AMERICAN BIRD CONSERVANCY'S FIELD GUIDE TO ALL THE BIRDS OF
NORTH AMERICA

A BREAKTHROUGH IN DESIGN INNOVATION SETS THE STANDARD FOR
EFFICIENCY, BEAUTY, ACCURACY


Birdwatching in North America is about to be revolutionized forever.

HarperReference, along with the American Bird Conservancy, introduces
THE AMERICAN BIRD CONSERVANCY'S FIELD GUIDE TO ALL THE BIRDS OF NORTH
AMERICA (April 25, 1997; $19.95) The first guide created by an
information designer, ALL THE BIRDS OF NORTH AMERICA leaps ahead of
existing books with a revolutionary system for identifying birds --
organization not by taxonomy (the traditional, scientific method of
classification), but by field-recognizable, instantly-observable
characteristics. Birdwatchers have an easier, faster, and surer way
to locate birds, simply by starting with what they see first --
habitat and shape. With a unique page-finding system using icons and
color-coded keys based on feeding behavior and ecological niche, this
guide allows instant access to spectacular illustrations and clear
text for the over 800 species of North American birds.

All past generations of bird identification guides have followed an
organizational system which dates back to 1895. The taxonomical
system requires prior scientific knowledge and was never designated
for use in the field. Old generations of bird guides not only demand
a considerable prior knowledge of the scientific classification of
birds, but they also waste valuable time for birders, since it is
fundamentally difficult to locate one of 800 species within the book
before the bird in question flies away.

ALL THE BIRDS OF NORTH AMERICA is the first guide in which
organization and accessibility has been taken seriously, the first
conceived with the birdwatcher -- both beginning and advanced -- in
mind.

Bird identification

Color-coded keys inside the book's cover start by grouping all birds
by habitat: waterbirds are found in the blue-tabbed pages, landbirds
in the green. In the right-hand margin of the keys, a display of bird
icons (drawn as instantly-observable shapes) allows for quick
identification. Once the icon which most resembles the bird in
question has been selected, the birder can then use the color bar and
key number accompanying the icon to locate the correct grouping of
birds within the pages of the book. Once there, the birder will be
able to compare the bird in the field to a group of accurate
illustrations, determine the species and gender, and read notes about
the characteristics and habitat of the bird. Additionally, an
alphabetical index in the back of the guide allows birders to check
off birds they have spotted and identified in the field.


Unique features

The greatest distinction in the bird groupings is the horizontal
format of the illustrations. Since 1934, field guides have grouped
birds vertically, with illustration on one page and text on the facing
page. However, the human eye naturally scans information
horizontally, and the information within ALL THE BIRDS OF NORTH
AMERICA has been designed accordingly.

The illustrations themselves offer additional improvements on past
guides. Eight hundred species are depicted in full-color, panoramic
paintings by America's most accomplished bird artists -- these are
simply the best bird illustrations available. Birds are pictured in
their natural habitat to assure more accurate comparisons, variations
in plumage are depicted and labeled, and the illustrations are, on
average, 20% larger than those of other field guides.

Bird listings incorporate the latest changes from the American
Ornithological Union, and the use of both large and small type allows
this book includes more textual information than the existing field
guides. Color-coded range maps accompany the text, and comparative
essays between groupings resolve the most common identification
problems. Written by a team of America's leading ornithological
experts, this information is the most accurate, up-to-date available.


Extinct species

ALL THE BIRDS OF NORTH AMERICA is the first and only field guide to
dedicate an entire section to extinct species, many of which are
unknown to most birders. Using a variety of sources including museum
drawings, Jack Griggs and his team have created never-before-seen
illustrations of these extinct species in their original habitat.
These state-of-the-art computer-generated images provide the most
accurate depiction of birds the world has already lost. Descriptions,
cause of extinction (if known), and range maps are also included for
each species.


Conservation

ALL THE BIRDS OF NORTH AMERICA is the only field guide that highlights
endangered species while emphasizing conservation issues. Throughout
the book, yellow highlighting marks species which have disappeared
from a significant portion of their natural range; red marks those in
greatest danger of extinction which are now dependent upon human
intervention for survival. Within the text, the birder can find
information about the birds' natural habitat and what human factors
endanger their habitat and their existence.

The American Bird Conservancy, the nation's leading bird preservation
organization, is dedicated solely to the preservation of wild birds
and their habitats throughout the Americas. ABC's Policy Council is a
unifying umbrella for 60 member organizations devoted to bird
conservation (including The American Birding Association, the National
Wildlife Federation, and the Nature Conservancy).


THE AMERICAN BIRD CONSERVANCY'S FIELD GUIDE TO ALL THE BIRDS OF NORTH
AMERICA is dedicated to the birder in the field. A weather-resistant,
vinyl cover, sturdy sewn binding, and a pocket-sized format allows
birdwatchers to bring it wherever they go, no matter the conditions.
With birdwatching booming across the country, among all ages and
economic groups, ALL THE BIRDS OF NORTH AMERICA could not come at a
better time. Finally, birders will have a bird guide which works on
all levels, defines state-of-the-art, and is poised to bring
birdwatching into the 21st century.


About the American Bird Conservancy

The American Bird Conservancy (ABC) is a United States-based,
not-for-profit membership organization which addresses conservation
problems in the context of the entire Western Hemisphere. ABC's
Policy Council serves as the unifying force of a partnership of 60
members of the conservation community and is the sole American partner
and representative to BirdLife International, the combined force of
organizations from 110 countries working for the sustainability of all
life through the conservation of birds and their habitats.


About Dr. George H. Fenwick,
President of the American Bird Conservancy


George Fenwick's father was confined to his bedroom with the mumps
in 1922 when he looked out the window to see a bird in the tree
outside. That bird, a flicker as he later discovered, was the ill
boy's only link to the outside world and the source of his lifelong
love for birds and flight. (It was a flicker, conicidentally, that
also inspired the late naturalist Roger Tory Peterson to develop his
love of birds.) Mr. Fenwick later became a pilot and ran a charter
airline until one day, when he was still in his early 20s, engine
failure brought down his plane during takeoff and rendered him a
partial invalid. Still an avid birder in a time when birdwatching was
practically an unknown sport, Mr. Fenwick overcame his disability by
learning to identify birds by their calls, and he taught his son
George to do the same. Some of George's earliest childhood memories
are of sitting on the back porch of his home in Baltimore County,
Maryland, with his father, learning the sounds of the birds.
George Fenwick inherited his father's love of birds, but also
heeded his father's warning not to consider birding as a possible
career. "The only thing you could do in those days was become a
forest ranger," he says. At Washington and Jefferson College, he
declared English literature as his major, but he was not inspired by
the traditional curriculum he had chosen.
After his third year of college, George left English literature
behind when a friend invited him to take a year off to live and work
as a research biologist on an island in the Chesapeake Bay where a
group of scientists were taking an ecological inventory. He fell in
love with the work, stayed on the island for two years before
returning to school, and "it was all biology from then on."
In 1980, George Fenwick joined the Nature Conservancy's Science
team while finishing his dissertaion for the Department of
Pathobiology at Johns Hopkins University. He remained with the Nature
Conservancy for fifteen years, acting in many different roles and
capacities, including Program Director of the National Wetlands
Conservation Program (a program made possible in 1983 by a grant from
the Mellon Foundation), and Director of the Virginia Chapter of the
Nature Conservancy. While in Virginia, he developed the first
large-scale ecosystem initiatives in the state's history, and in 1990,
he was called back to the national office to coordinate and develop
the national Last Great Places Ecosystem Initiative.
It was back at the main office of the Nature Conservancy where
George Fenwick returned to his childhood love of birds. While Acting
Director of the Science Division, he organized a working group
dedicated to developing ways in which the Nature Conservancy could and
should protect birds. The more involved the group became, the more
Dr. Fenwick recognized the need for an organization to unify bird
conservation efforts across the country. In 1994, he left The Nature
Conservancy to found the American Bird Conservancy (ABC), a non-profit
organization dedicated to the conservation of declining and imperiled
birds throughout the Americas.
ABC soon after became the American representative to BirdLife
International (formerly the International Council of Bird Protection),
a partnership of 110 countries with organizations devoted to bird
conservation around the globe. Today he continues to strive for the
unification of bird conservation groups in the Western Hempisphere.
"The evolution is still ongoing," he says, but with 50 member
organizations under its umbrella (including the American Birding
Association, the Nature Conservancy, and the World Wildlife Fund), ABC
is well on its way to realizing Dr. Fenwick's goal.


About Jack Griggs,
Designer of All the Birds of North America

Beginning his higher education at the U.S. Naval Academy in
Annapolis, Jack Griggs finished at Stanford University with a degree
in electronic engineering. His first job was at Hewlett-Packard, then
a young and relatively small company, but he soon dedicated himself to
making a "career" out of never doing the same thing twice.
Taking up the life of an adventurer, Jack explored many of the
trails and much of the wilderness of North America, from the rain
forests of Costa Rica to remote villages in Alaska (where he and a
bush pilot once ran Boy Scout camps for the Inuit). He considers his
backpack his home -- as long as home contains a bird book and a pair
of binoculars in the side pocket.
Like all novice and mid-level birdwatchers, Jack was frustrated by
the birds he couldn't name simply because they had flown away before
he could locate them in a traditional, taxonomically-arranged field
guide. On a solo trip to Africa in 1979, he became especially
discouraged, knowing that he had traveled half-way around the world to
see these birds, and because of the organization of his field guide,
he couldn't identify many of them. Realizing that weak design, not
content, was the problem with 20th-century guides, Jack decided to
develop a new system which would resolve the shortcomings of all other
guides. After immersing himself for seven years in the emerging
discipline of information design, he assembled and managed a renowned
team of America's finest bird illustrator and ornithological experts
to create a superior bird identifications system. A passionate
conservationist himself, he selected the American Bird Conservancy as
the sponsor.
Between adventures, birding expeditions, and creating new
innovations in the field of information design, Jack Griggs has worked
frequently as a chef and more recently, a pastry chef for David Bouley
at the celebrated New York City restaurant Bouley. Having left New
York after ten years for a more bird-friendly environment, Griggs now
lives in Lawrence, Michigan.


# # #


THE AMERICAN BIRD CONSERVANCY'S FIELD GUIDE TO ALL THE BIRDS OF NORTH
AMERICA
Concept and design by Jack Griggs
HarperReference
publication date: April 25, 1997
$19.95 paperback
200 color bird illustrations
600 four-color range maps
ISBN 0-06-273028-2