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THE WILSON JOURNAL OF ORNITHOLOGY • Vol 124, No. 1. March 2012 
drawings notwithstanding, I found his illustrations 
to be accurately drawn, and 1 much prefer an 
accurate drawing painted with less detail to a 
highly detailed rendering of a bad initial drawing. 
If the basic drawing is poor, no amount of detail 
will make it better. Van Perlo succeeds best with 
birds he knows, either from observation or 
photographs, so most New Zealand birds are well 
drawn, while those from Micronesia or Hawaii are 
less so and uneven. Still, few of the drawings are 
seriously misleading. 
Coloration is another matter. Throughout the 
book, the colors are overly bright to the point of 
being garish (possibly more the fault of the printer 
than the illustrator). But the user cannot assume that 
everything is too bright generally because the almost 
fluorescent Orange Fruit Dove (Ptilinopus victor) is 
disappointingly dull. Within a plate, colors often are 
more dissimilar than they are in life. The Todir- 
amphus kingfishers are shown as either rich blue or 
olive green above, even though all are subtle shades 
of greenish blue. Among the large pigeons, several 
are too blue above, the New Zealand Pigeon 
(Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae) grotesquely so. The 
Nicobar Pigeon ( Caloenas nicobarica), which looks 
black in the field, Pohnpei Fantail (Rhipidura 
kubaryi). and Mao ( Gymnomyzja samoensis) are so 
colorful as to be unrecognizable. 
Comments on identification are very brief, and 
rely heavily on the illustrations. Most are barely 
adequate, but many are far too brief. Of the 
Nukupuu (Hemignathus lueidus), van Perlo simply 
says "unmistakable in range" when nothing could 
be further from the truth (Pratt and Pyle 2000), 
especially given his very inaccurately colored 
female. 1 found numerous outright mistakes, the 
most obvious of which include: long wavy, rather 
than stiff, tail streamers on the Red-tailed Tropicbird 
0 Phaethon rubricauda): black, rather than chestnut, 
thighs on the Great Blue Heron (A idea he radios)-, 
reversal of the illustrations of the two megapodes 
(Megapodius spp.); a contrastingly pale tail on the 
misleadingly named Grey-tailed Tattler (Tringa 
brevipes ); a barred belly on the nonbreeding 
Wandering Tattler (T. incana): badly garbled 
subspecies of Whimbrel (Numeniusphaeopus), with 
hudsonu us wrongly said to resemble variegatus, 
and the illustration of the latter actually representing 
the former; the statement that the two Phalaropus 
phalaropes are identical rior.sally with images that 
compound the. error; dusky orange feet (should be 
w excepl ,he Hawaiian Islands, 
ere they are bright orange) and dark tail (paler 
than rest of dorsum in all Pacific forms) on the Black 
Noddy (Anous minutus ); wrong subspecies of 
Eastern Yellow Wagtail (A/, t. tschutschensis rather 
than M. t. simillima ); blue rather than silvery white 
‘spectacles’ on the Chinese Hwamei (Gurrulax 
canorus)-, a white band on the underside of the tail of 
the male Common Cicadabird (Coracina tenuiros- 
tris ); wrong map for the Black-faced Cuckooshnke 
(C novaehollandiae); immature Northern Mock¬ 
ingbird (Mimus polyglottos) with an unstreaked 
breast; pink rather than red undertail coverts of the 
Red-whiskered Bulbul (Pycnonotus jocosux); a 
sharp crest on the Palau Flycatcher {Mmgru 
erythrops), which shows hardly any crest, and no 
ca*st on the Azure-crested Flycatcher (A/, a:\ireo- 
capilla), which has a pronounced one: incorrect 
distribution and misleading coloration of the 
Samoan form of Fiji Shrikebill (Clytorhynchiis 
vitiensis powelli); the more widespread gray, rather 
than the much darker Palau form of White-breasted 
Woods wallow (Artemius teucorynchus)-, prominent 
wing bars on Maui female Hawaii Amakihi 
(Hemignathus virens ); and misspellings of Niua- 
fo'ou and Matsuduira. The brief habitat descriptions 
are often inappropriate to the region. For example, 
the Little Ringed Plover (Charadrius dubius), a rare 
winter visitor to the small islands and atolls of 
Micronesia, is said to inhabit “sparsely vegetated 
fiats at shallow inland waters”, clearly a reference to 
continental rather than island habitats. 
Van Perlo based his voice descriptions on study 
of published recordings rather than on field work 
with the unfortunate result that voices of Micro- 
nesian and many Polynesian birds are not 
described at all. even though all have been well 
described in the literature and are readily 
available in sound archives. Perplexingly. the 
accounts include some vocalizations that are not 
heard in the region (i.e.. those of nonbreeding 
visitors that vocalize only in breeding areas) 1 
found van Perlo's transliterations inscrutable and 
often downright misleading, and he makes no 
comparisons among syntopic species that would be 
helpful to birders. For example, many of the "little 
green” Hawaiian honeycreepers sing trills that are 
easily compared (Pratt et al. 1987). Van Perlo 
accurately describes the voice of the Hawaii 
Amakihi (H. virens) but fails to compare it to the 
songs of eight other species with similar songs. Hi- 
description of the homologous song 
the Kauai Amakihi ( H . kauaiensis) as a “high. 
3-noted, slightly descending tjeutjewjew or reed- 
warbler-like series’’ is incomprehensible and must I 
