Thrushes

by Peter Clement. 2001. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Hardback, $49.50. ISBN 0-691-08852-7.

The Helm monograph series, copublished in North America with Princeton University Press, has brought us such venerable titles as Seabirds (1983), Shorebirds (1986), and Wildfowl (1988). Although a valuable series as a whole, only one or two subsequent books have been as Promethean as those classics. Thrushes, the latest title from Helm/Princeton, is a commendable, if unexceptional, addition to the series.

The true thrushes, about 162 species largely in the genera Monticola, Zoothera, Myadestes, Catharus, and Turdus, are predominantly an Old World group. Nevertheless, this book includes 68 New World species, and 19 that have been recorded in continental North America. The format that this book follows is both successful and very familiar. About 50 pages of introduction includes sections on taxonomy, general behavior, the fossil record and conservation of the thrushes. Then follow 60 plates with brief facing-page texts and three-tone maps showing global distribution. Finally, the bulk of the book consists of the individual species accounts.

The plates are the work of a trio of British artists, Ren Hathway (39 plates), Clive Byers (13), and Jan Wilczur (8). Those by Hathway and Wilzcur are excellent. North American readers may be frustrated by the treatment of the six regularly occurring Catharus species (here including Wood Thrush C. mustelina) in a mere 18 images on two plates. Given the number of distinctive taxa involved, these species should have been afforded another plate or two. To demonstrate this inconsistency, American Robin Turdus migratorius appropriately gets a whole plate to itself. The plates by Byers are, unfortunately, not of the same high standard as those by the other artists, and fail to capture the structural characteristics of many species.

Although the artwork understandably draws the bulk of the attention in such guides, the species accounts are usually the most valuable parts. Clement does a good job of collating and summarizing the existing literature on the thrushes, but there was limited evidence of novel research, and I was disappointed by the very conservative taxonomic arrangement followed, when this book provided a great opportunity for some much-needed revisions. These Helm guides are often criticized for a Eurocentric approach, and I found this evident in one interesting piece of information regarding the unique specimen of the “grey morph” of Varied Thrush Z. naevia, which is described only vaguely as being housed in “California State University.”

This book has somewhat limited application within the Central Valley, and its fairly weak treatment of regularly occurring North American species undermines its value on this continent as a whole. However, these Helm/Princeton guides are almost always a valuable addition to the ornithological literature simply by summarizing much of what is known about a group of related birds in one source. This makes them useful references for any globe-trotting birder, and Thrushes is no exception.

Jon R. King