Sounds of the Maghreb

people and culture.

The result is a fascinating synthesis of knowledge about the region’s birds, their sounds, taxonomy and environment, derived to a significant extent from lead author Arnoud van den Berg’s extensive field experience in the Maghreb, but with important contributions from the rest of the Sound Approach team. Arnoud begins the substantive section of the book “Even now, after 30 years, I am still angry about the way Slender-billed Curlew … was allowed to become extinct”, immediately hooking the reader into his unique take on searching for and finding this iconic wader in Morocco back in the day and why he now considers it gone for good.

Each chapter is similarly fascinating, informative and at times entertaining, and the reading experience is enhanced throughout by the sound recordings, to be played as indicated in the text. Some tracks are rare and many are educational, but importantly they also add a sense of place and encounter. Readers will decide on their own favourites, but I thought the inclusion of the four ‘Slender-billed Curlew’ recordings was inspired: one is of a call “masked by simultaneously calling Eurasian Curlews”, another is a clever reconstruction of that call, and the other two are human imitations – that, sadly, is the entire sound archive for this lost species.

As always, this Sound

Approach masterpiece is brought to life by numerous elucidatory sonograms and an outstanding collection of photos, including displaying Houbara Bustard, hemipodes in the hand and field, and Golden Nightjar in threat posture, but there are just two plates, of African Dunn’s Lark and Seebohm’s Wheatear. Additional illustrations of other enigmatic birds were all this reviewer was left wanting more of from this outstanding insight into the Maghreb and its special avifauna. Dominic Mitchell