36 THE AUDUB ONT SW Di ei 
BOOK REVIEWS 
THE LIVING BIRD 
Sixth Annual, 1967. Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology 
Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. . .$5.00 
The collection of articles, issued annually by the Cornell University L. of O. 
provides useful material on bird life. The laboratory is a center for the 
study and cultural appreciation of birds, and has its headquarters in famed 
Sapsucker Woods in upstate New York. The Laboratory is open almost 
every day in the year and provides a warm welcome for visitors. It has 
pricelists of records, slides, and publications. 
Two articles I read with the greatest interest in this sixth annual 
edition were “Ecological and Behavioral Aspects of Predation by the Nor- 
thern Shrike,” by Tom J. Cade, and “Egg-Carrying by the Pileated Wood- 
pecker,” by Frederick K. Truslow. Most of the observations of the Shrike 
were made in Alaska. Cade points out that the Shrike catches small birds 
in its feet, although it uses its beak first to strike them down. It attacks 
rodents with its beak first and kills them before picking them up with its 
feet. The kills are usually made with hard bites to the neck. 
The Woodpecker story concerns a sighting made in Everglades National 
Park where a Pileated Woodpecker removed a clutch of eggs from a pine 
tree to another nest after the tree had been broken off at the nest-hole. 
The incident took place in April 1966, with the story enhanced by photos. 
—Raymond Mostek 
IN WILDERNESS IS THE PRESERVATION OF THE WORLD 
By Eliot Porter. Edited by David Brower. Selections from Thoreau. 
Sierra Club & Ballantine Books, New York, 1962. $3.98 
Here is a book that enables us to view in color the things Henry David 
Thoreau loved and wrote so much about. Mr. Porter, by means of photo- 
graphy, has captured the heart and spirit of Thoreau in a unique form. 
The book is far more than pictures and verses. 
The idea of writing this book came to Mr. Porter as a young poy 
while living on a small island in Maine. Here he met for the first time 
Thoreau in his beloved “Walden.” At the same time he became interested 
in photography. After many years, the idea of taking pictures of things 
Thoreau might have written about began to haunt him. He reread “Walden” 
and began photographing streams, woods, rocks, marshes and ponds through- 
out most of our northwestern states. After much labor, his dream becam?2 
a reality in one of the finest books ever published. In fact the Sierra Book 
Club has it listed as one of the ten most beautiful books yet produced. 
This book has both verses and pictures to make any conservationist 
renew his struggle in maintaining his vigilance in the battle of retaining 
what little wilderness we have left. Those not conservationists at heart 
perhaps will glimpse the beauty of the wild and be persuaded that these 
