Book Review: Storks, Ibises, and Spoonbills of the World

While I've never worked exclusively as a birdkeeper, as I have with reptiles and mammals, I've always had a special appreciation for birds.  Especially, I've had a soft-spot for the tall birds - a grab-bag term for a group of non-related large, often terrestrial or aquatic species, including the flightless ratites, the cranes, the flamingos, and, above all others the storks.

I've never worked with a single species of stork in captivity, but have observed many in the wild, from fleeting glimpses of saddle-billed storks in the wetlands of East Africa to a remarkable hour of watching wood storks build their nests in the trees above the Jacksonville Zoo. So when I first saw the magnificent Storks, Ibises, and Spoonbills of the World, by James A. Hancock, James A. Kushlan, and M. Philip Kahl, featured on my recommendations list on Amazon, I knew I had to have it.

The authors have complied possibly the world's finest reference guide on these birds, with a separate entry for each species containing range maps and detailed biological information.  Each entry is also introduced with a beautiful illustration of each species in its natural habitat, an example of which is the painting of a lesser adjutant on the book's cover.  At the beginning of the book is a series of chapters introducing these birds in general - overviews of their behavior, their reproduction, and, most importanly, their conservation.  Appendices at the end provide endless amounts of raw data on body and egg measurements.  With hundreds and hundreds of sources from over the decades compiled in the bibliography, this is easily one of the most comprehensive animal reference books I've ever encountered.

One area in which the book is, I feel, slightly deficient is in its discussion of the cultural history of birds and people.  The entry on the white stork, for instance, does make mention of the mythological role of this species in European culture - but only in a very short paragraph, buried towards the end of the entry, that notes that there was once a cultural taboo on the killing of this species, which no longer exists (it never even mentions storks bringing babies!).  There are so many fascinating stories about people and storks (and, I am willing to bet, ibises and spoonbills) that it seems a shame to leave them out.

I consider this book a must-own for bird keepers working with the species described within it.  While I've never worked with storks, spoonbills, or ibises, it's a rare zoo bird collection that doesn't contain a representative from at least one of these groups - some species, such as scarlet ibises and roseate spoonbills, are among the most common of zoo birds, and several species of stork and ibis are maintained under Species Survival Plans.  That being said, many stork species have failed to become as sustainable as they should be in captivity (a fact that the authors note, pointing out that many of the more spectacular stork species are still threatened by capture for sale to collectors).  While the book does not go much into captive husbandry, it does provide a great deal of information on natural history, and I have always felt that a firm knowledge of the later is what should inform and guide the former.

Good reference materials on birds that delve into every species in a particular group are hard to find... especially because information on some species is so scarce (and, for that reason, some of the entries in this book are very short - a bare two pages each, including maps, for the wattled and sharp-tailed ibises).  When such volumes are available, they should be treasured by all relevant zoo staff - as well as anyone who just happens to have an interest in some very remarkable birds.

Storks, Ibises, and Spoonbills of the World at Amazon.com