eee el) Us beORNGe bh Ue tebo wed Len 15 
enhanced. Apparently she was able to gain this confidence by first at- 
tracting the birds with food and nesting facilities. 
In the book, 160 pages are devoted to bird behavior, the eighth chapter 
being a description of the bird mind, including emotions, memory, recog- 
nition, intelligence and flight performance. The remaining pages contain 
descriptions and analyses of the songs of 27 species. There are 32 illus- 
trations, all of them excellent reproductions of outstanding photographs 
by Eric Haskins, F. R. P. S. There is also a foreword by Julian Huxley. 
Altogether, this is a most readable and absorbing book. 
Dr. Alfred Lewy, 25 E. Washington Blvd., Chicago 
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BirRDS OF MEXICO, by Emmet Reid Blake, University of Chicago Press, 
Chicago, 644 pages, 1953. $6.00. Subtitle: “A Guide for Field Identifi- 
cation.” 
We who have birded in Mexico cannot help but envy you who still have 
that trip before you. How we wished when there for a guide book—any 
kind of guide book. Now there is one, and it isn’t just any kind. It’s a 
good one to which Emmet Reid Blake, associate curator of birds at the 
Chicago Natural History Museum, devoted years of painstaking effort. 
We believe that with a little practice it will make field identification of 
Mexican birds as pleasurable and almost as easy as identifying the strang- 
ers that show up on your own feeder. 
The book treats all the 967 bird species that have been recorded from 
the Mexican mainland, including the Lower California peninsula and the 
adjacent waters and islands. It serves also as a guide to the birds of 
Guatemala and other parts of northern Central America. The 967 species 
represent 89 families and include more than 750 resident species and about 
200 winter visitants and transients. More than 80 of the species live only 
in Mexico and about 400 others do not range north of Mexico. 
There are 329 illustrations by Douglas E. Tibbitts, staff artist of the 
Musuem, all in black and white except the frontispiece. Each of the 89 
families includes a dichotomous key for identification, in which each unit 
presents only two choices. We tested this key system on a number of 
familiar birds and others not so familiar, and always finished with the 
correct identification. Do not, however, buy or borrow the book the day 
before leaving for Mexico. Get it in advance and study it, putting it into 
practice on some of the birds covered which you do know. Then you should 
have little trouble identifying the birds you don’t know, IF you know 
families fairly well. | 
The richness of Mexico’s bird life as shown by Mr. Blake’s book is over- 
whelming at first. For example, Mexico has 60 species of hummingbirds. 
It also has some delightful families which we do not know here, such as 
the Motmot, Puffbirds, Cotingas, and Honeycreepers, most of which seem 
to fit in naturally with the list of families after you have figured out 
their chief characteristics. John Bayless, 8925 Indian Boundary, Gary, Ind. 
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