Moving mountains
IF you read my recent article on birds that are specially adapted to the ecological privations of mountaintops ( Birdwatch 378: 24-27), you’ll know that many distinct strategies have evolved to cope with such conditions. With mountains effectively forming islands or island chains, they have acted as an evolutionary driver, not just as barriers but as isolating mechanisms, sometimes producing unique species and even whole avifaunas.
The depths of this subject are now illustrated by the appearance of this academic text, comprised of chapters written by different teams of researchers and edited by three renowned experts on montane birds. These chapters deal with their subject in a logical order, diving into the ramifications of mountain biodiversity and habitats, adaptation, migration and seasonal movement, population trends, the effects of climate change and other anthropogenic activities and modelling future trends.
While doing this, the sheer variety of birds above the planet’s treelines is described in detail, whether they are resident, winter or summer visitors or just occasional wanderers. It is perhaps this that makes the book a worthy addition to the bookshelves of the general birding enthusiast, making a potentially dry textbook readable and elucidating. Many interesting facts and snippets pepper the text, revealing facts about species familiar and exotic to the British birder. The different species of petrel that are reliant on high coastal mountains for breeding tunnels, the habits of the likes of Rock Wren and
South American hummingbirds, and the continuing declines of specialist mountain species are all delved into in satisfying detail.
There is particularly illuminating data on the birds of Rocky Mountain ecotones such as Wandering Tattler, which breeds on high mountain moors, and Horned Lark, which is both limited to altitudinous rocky areas in some places but can forage and winter on similar areas in the lowlands. Paragraphs on adaptations such as the plumage tones of Alpine Accentor and the different profuse feather tracts of Ptarmigan just scratch the surface of the gems to be found in this book.
Academic textbooks are not always so easy to comprehend but this is highly recommended as the best place to start if you have any interest in the subject and wish to find out more about the mountain birds of the world. It’s also an important work in figuring out what will happen to such species as the average climate continues to warm. Familiar birds such as Snow Bunting are already noticeably declining, and we may yet lose it as a British breeding species. Much up-todate data on translocation and mitigation projects is included here, but none are happening fast enough – you’ll find much food for thought on what to do about this within these pages. David Callahan
“Academic textbooks are not always so easy to comprehend but this is highly recommended as the best place to start if you have any interest in the subject”