BOOK REVIEWS 
song followed by additional song types and then a variety of calls. All but 59 species 
have at least two cuts (the American Coot wins the prize with 10), most of those with 
just one cut being water birds, and some having more than one vocalization or sound 
type within the cut (such as the Common Nighthawk, with the peent and the boom). 
The owls are especially well represented by more vocalization types than in any of 
the other regional CD collections for North America (check out the barking alarm 
call of the male Long-eared Owl). Some interesting variants are included, such as an 
unusual song of the Olive-sided Flycatcher, as are several subspecies (of the White- 
breasted Nuthatch and Fox Sparrow, for example). Some species, such as some of 
the rails and owls, are represented even by distinct calls for each sex, when they differ. 
Unfortunately, only call notes and no songs are included for the Evening Grosbeak 
and House Sparrow (both of which mimic and are therefore of special interest). 
Although the variety of vocalizations deserves to be praised, the opportunity to 
be utterly thorough was passed by. There are not only region-specific song dialects 
that differ from dialects of the same species elsewhere in North America, there are 
distinctive vocalizations (not just dialects) uttered by populations (and perhaps even 
unrecognized species) within the Pacific Northwest. This is a very large region, after 
all. I was disappointed by the lack of a song of the Streaked Horned Lark (Eremophila 
alpestris strigata), one of the most distinctive songs in the complex, for example, 
as well as of regionally distinctive subspecies of the Willow Flycatcher, Gray Jay, and 
Bushtit. The very incomplete selection of Red Crossbill types (and no indication of 
which ones are included) is a huge oversight. There are some attempts to include 
subspecific information with some cuts, but they are inconsistent. One example is the 
White-breasted Nuthatch, the first two cuts of which are given simply as two different 
song types, while the next two cuts of call notes are labeled as being from “interior” 
and “coastal” birds; all four cuts should have been so labeled. 
Lack of Precision in Recording Localities. Related to the lack of recordings of 
subspecies, one of my biggest complaints is the lack of more precise localities for 
the recordings. In many cases, more specific locality data would have allowed the 
user to determine which form had been recorded. The Fox Sparrow represents the 
best attempt at labeling each cut with its subspecies group. But since each group is 
comprised of more than one subspecies, the actual location would have added very 
useful information. 
A further example is Swainson's Thrush, of which two distinctive forms (probably 
species) occur in the Pacific Northwest. The recording from Montana is obviously of 
an Olive-backed Thrush, but only the call is given (the description neglects to mention 
that the first calls are not the two-parted whit-burrr but rather the distinctive prit 
of this eastern form). On the other hand, the analogous liquid drop-like whit of the 
Russet-backed Thrush can be heard only in the background of the third cut, which 
otherwise features the harsher and less often heard alarm call. More precise locality 
data would also have made the Red Crossbill recordings more useful. 
One can log on to http://www.animalbehaviorarchive.org, enter the Macauley 
Library catalog number in the search field, and thereby obtain a little more information 
on each recording. At the time of this writing, the only additional information available 
was the exact date of the recording, but it appears that more specific locality data may 
eventually become available. By listening to the entire recording on the website (from 
which cuts were taken for this publication), more information can be gleaned from the 
recordists’ tag notes for some of the recordings. Only in this way did I discover that 
the first cut of Fox Sparrow song, labeled as being from the “slate-colored group,” was 
recorded in the Cascades near Sisters, Oregon. This would place it in the subspecies 
Passerella iliaca fulva, which is a Thick-billed Sparrow, not a Slate-colored. 
Several recordings were made entirely outside of the region. For example, calls of 
the Downy Woodpecker from Maryland were used when Keller’s perfectly good cut 
in Bird Songs of California (Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, 2003) could have 
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