Costco Connection - November 2006

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Western tanager

One
for the

Spotted owl

By Steve Fisher

WHEN PEOPLE SAY Costco member Les

Beletsky is for the birds, it is not meant in a derogatory way. Beletsky is a professional bird biologist and natural-history writer and editor. Before turning to writing, he spent 20 years con-

ducting behavioral research on birds, concentrating on their vocalizations and breeding behavior.

Now, Beletsky ( www.lesbeletsky.com) has added his expertise to a fascinating combination of nature and technology. His latest book, Bird Songs: 250 North American Birds in Song, was born in the minds of book producers Becker&Mayer!, but they turned to Beletsky to bring it to fruition.

The book belongs to that genus known as the coffee-table book. Large, glossy and hardcover, it features full-color drawings of the birds and short, thorough profiles. What adds to the value of this tome is a connected device that plays the song of each bird, according to a number key on the page.

Beletsky turned to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Birds of North America series for his research. The sounds were derived from the Cornell Library of Natural Sounds. The drawings are by bird and nature artists David Nurney, Diane Pierce, H. Douglas Pratt and John Sill. All one has to do is read a bird’s profile and dial in the appropriate number to hear its song. It’s like having a nature iPod.

It was Beletsky’s task to select the birds and compile the sounds and profiles. The selection process was one of the more difficult aspects of the book, he says.

“There’s a good 650 or so birds in North America to choose from, regularly occurring, that most people could actually see,” Beletsky tells The Connection. “It actually took some effort to narrow it down.”

Some effort? Monumental effort is more like it. Beletsky chose birds for their familiarity as well as their accessibility. “I wanted to pick a lot of common birds that people could see [while] walking around

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