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BIRDS OVER AMERICA, Revised Edition, by Roger Tory Peterson. Dodd, 
Mead and Co., New York 16, N. Y. 342 plus xiii pages with over 80 
black-and-white halftones. 1948 revised and reprinted 1964. $7.50. 
This personal account of bird-watching, impressions and reminscences 
by America’s most distinguished bird artist and author received the John 
Burroughs Award when it was first published sixteen years ago. During 
the intervening years, the book has grown in stature, if anything, with the 
world-wide fame and recognition the author has attained. This is not a 
serious text on bird anatomy, conservation or migration, but rather a 
pleasant and friendly history of how Dr. Peterson came to be a bird- 
watcher and of what he and his friends like to do best. 
Unlike his more recent books, which range over the whole world in 
search of birds, this text confines itself to the American continent and its 
surrounding waters. In this sense alone, the book would be worth while 
to most of us, for Dr. Peterson tells where the rarest birds might be found, 
where one can see the most birds, how to participate in a “Big Day” count, 
how to photograph birds, and so on. There are chapters on the lure of the 
bird list, the Christmas Census, birds in the big city, hawks and owls and 
falcons, warbler waves, birds of the coast, birds along the border, bird 
colonies, and much more. Anyone who enjoys bird study will find these 
pages worthwhile. 
The author has gone carefully through BIRDS OVER AMERICA and 
brought it up to date with a sentence or two here and several paragraphs 
there. But for the most part, the book retains its flavor of the immediate 
post-war years. If it is true that membership in bird clubs and Audubon 
societies has increased nearly ten-fold in the past fifteen years, then legions 
of readers must exist who will find this book new and absorbing. If you 
share my interest in bird protography, you will enjoy the superb pictures 
and find many helvoful] hints in the “Photogravhic Postscript” at the end of 
the book. If you just like good yarns about birding and bird-watchers, you 
will delight in the chapter on “Trailing America’s Rarest Bird.” For here 
is an account that is full of anticipation, suspense, frustration, and eventual 
fulfillment, as Dr. Peterson seeks and finally finds what may have been the 
last two Ivory-billed ‘Woodpeckers. In short, whether you are a new bird- 
watcher or an old one, you will find much of value in this book. 
Pau! H. Lobik, 22W681 Tamarack Drive, Glen Ellyn, Ill. 
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RAMPART CANYON DAM AND RESERVOIR PROJECT, Yukon River, 
Alaska — A Report on Fish and Wildlife Resources Affected. Bureau of 
Sport Fisheries and Wildlife, Bureau of Commercial Fisheries. 122 pages. 
Maps and Tables. 1964. Free. (Box 2481, Juneau, Alaska). 
This report indicates what several conservation groups have already 
proclaimed: That this proposed dam, which would take twenty years to 
build, would have a disastrous effect on wildlife, not only in Alaska, but 
also in other states. The Illinois Audubon Society is strongly opposed to 
this project. The report considers the effect on fish, trapping, and water- 
fowl. Every Audubon conservation committee should obtain a copy of this 
free report. 
Raymond Mostek, 615 Rochdale Circle, Lombard, Ill. 60148 
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