I hold in my hand an advance review copy of the new book, ?Birds of the Puget Sound Region,? by Bob Morse, Tom Aversa, and Hal Opperman, which should be widely available at all the usual bird book outfitters on September 8, 2003. My first impression is a word I usually try to avoid in the context of all things avian, ?Cute!? The small apparent size of the book, like a passerine or a 4x6? file card, plus the superb photographic portrait of the quintessential cute bird of the northwest, a male Rufous Hummingbird, larger than life almost filling the cover of this compact volume, add to this impression.



Upon leafing through this book, I am amazed at how many birds and how much information fills these pages, with one species taking up each 2-page spread, photograph on the left and detailed particulars on the right.



Coming soon after Bob?s book, ?A Birder?s Guide to Coastal Washington,? fans of that book will be delighted to note that the authors have managed to include that emphasis on different habitats and local birding hotspots that made the previous book so useful. Plus, there are instructions on how to feed birds, how to select binoculars, bird anatomy, and a comprehensive list of other books and websites for protobirders to graduate up to, all in this compact hand-sized format. Amazing! This book is not just for beginners, though, but would serve well as a field guide for visiting birders to this area as well. Not just the easy birds are covered, I noted, as my eyes fell upon the photo of the Gray-Crowned Rosy Finch, a bird I finally saw for the first time this summer after searching for years! The index serves double duty as a checklist, and there is space under each species account to jot down where and when first seen.



This book fills the need for a comprehensive field guide for our area, suitable for both adults and young people. Previous books have featured just a handful of our birds, not ?all? of them as this book does, or have not covered the geographical area well, such as ?Birds of Seattle,? which included ?And Puget Sound? in small print as a subtitle, which didn?t go over too well for those of us living in the other 11 counties covered by this new book.



In a talk and slide show at Nisqually last Wednesday evening, August 27, 2003, Bob showed slides of many of the excellent photos and sample pages from the book. He said that literally thousands of photographs were considered when planning the book, but amazingly enough, many of those selected as best were by local photographers, some in attendance, and who would constitute a Who?s Who of Tweeters with Shutters. It is quite astonishing to see how well these excellent photographs appeared enlarged on the huge screen of the Nisqually event room, as we gazed upon the feather edges of the 10-foot tall Golden-Crowned Kinglet who ate Tacoma!



An excellent website featuring sample pages and some cool surprises, as well as information on ordering the book, is at: www.birdsofpugetsound.com.



Diane Yorgason-Quinn

Gig Harbor, WA

Avosetta at hotmail.com