Month: June 2009

by Dillon Ripley

A Paddling of Ducks was written by a man passionate about waterfowl. From a young age he always wanted to have a duck pond of his own- and he did just that, building enclosed ponds and over the years keeping a wide variety of ducks and some geese. He traveled afar with other duck enthusiasts to collect eggs and find specimens- sometimes to try and bring home live ducks, other times to shoot them (enjoying a roast duck dinner) and at other times simply relishing at seeing a certain species in the wild. Most interesting to me was reading about his efforts to raise ducks, and a few anecdotes of duck behavior. I had just read in Sandy that bantam hens make the best foster mothers for baby cranes, and here Ripley advocates the same hen for hatching ducklings, explaining why bantams are better than incubators, or other hen breeds. Unfortunately, I am not really crazy about ducks, just mildly curious about them, so a lot of this book was rather dry reading. There are pages and pages describing the geographic distribution of the many different duck species, their migrating patterns, how they are related to each other, how the plumage of the ducklings varies, and particularly, enthusiastic descriptions of their beautiful colors. The book is graced by many fine black-and-white line drawings by Francis Lee Jaques, but without any titles to the pictures, I often had no idea which duck I was looking at. I wished for some color illustrations, and ended up looking up a few of the more spectacular-sounding or oft-mentioned ducks online, including the author\’s favorite eider duck, and the presumed-extinct pink-headed duck. If you know someone who loves ducks, this book would be an excellent read. For me, it was just piddling.

I read this book for the TBR Challenge.

Rating: 2/5                          256 pages, 1957

The True Story of a Rare Sandhill Crane Who Joined Our Family
by Dayton O. Hyde

I really loved this author\’s book about coyotes. The crane one, well, it just wasn\’t as captivating. Bird behavior and biology has never fascinated me quite as much as that of mammals, and so when the book felt lacking in detailed descriptions, my attention started to flag. Sandy is about a rancher\’s devoted efforts to save the greater sandhill crane, a relatively rare subspecies that at the time he began his studies was not getting much attention or protection. Parts of the book describe his work- rescuing eggs from floods, raising the chicks, trying to discover the whereabouts of his birds when they migrated alone and failed to return (one trio ended up in a zoo, but recognized him when he visited!). Other sections go into lengthy discourses on the importance of wetlands conservation, land management, and wildlife protection- mostly on behalf of the cranes, but also in consideration of other waterfowl and animals. There\’s several chapters full of reminiscings of the ranch he worked on as a young man, and while the author talks a bit about how he first became enchanted with sandhill cranes back then, it felt like a digression to me and at one point I nearly put the book down, because I wanted it to get back to the cranes! Also, in many cases he described the end result of some studies, but not how he reached them- which details I would have found interesting, but maybe that\’s just me. Hyde was the first to successfully raise sandhill chicks (with chickens as foster mothers!) and release them into the wild, instead of just ending up in zoos. He also carried out extensive surveys of their population numbers, and after years of work was considering something of an expert on cranes, giving advice on their management to some wildlife conservation organizations. These large, ancient birds (fossil records date back at least two and a half million years) are impressively elegant, I just wished they had graced the pages more fully.

I read this book as part of the 2009 TBR Challenge, hosted by MizB.

Rating: 2/5 ……. 214 pages, 1968