The Birds of Kaua'i

#20
Title:  The Birds of Kaua'i
Author: Jim Denny
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Year: 1999
Genre: Natural history

120 pages

+ Large photos of birds in their habitats; useful information about birds

- Extinct and very rare birds mixed in with more likely sightings

After recently reading Phoebe Snetsinger's Birding on Borrowed Time, it was fun to see Denny acknowledging her son,Tom Snetsinger, an avian field researcher in Hawaii. This book is not a field guide, but is useful for learning about Kaua'i's birds' habitats, behaviors, and sometimes calls. The inclusion of some historical and environmental information is welcome and these pages are easy to read and engaging. The bird photos are larger than in many field guides and show the birds in more naturalistic poses. More on markings and differentiation between birds of similar appearance would be useful. The birds are presented by habitat, which is useful, but very rarely seen and extinct birds are intermingled with observable birds, which is distracting. This is true of the included bird checklist as well.

Many birders recommend H. Douglas Pratt et al.'s A Field Guide to the Birds of Hawaii and the Tropical Pacific, but for us bird dilettantes, Pratt and Jeffrey's A Pocket Guide to Hawai'i's Birds is probably sufficient when paired with The Birds of Kaua'i for island-specific focus.