[.ca] Owls Aren't Wise & Bats Aren't Blind: A Naturalist ... (ISBN 0609807978)

From Amazon.com:
Ever pick up a toad only to have it soak your hand? Don't worry, it was the animal's emergency water storage (not urine!), dumped in a fight-or-flight panic. Think that new beaver clan will dent the trout population in your favorite fishing hole? They don't touch the stuff: beavers are strictly vegan. And go ahead, get close to that porcupine, because they can't fire quills like an AK-47. Want more? Warner Shedd, a native Vermonter, lifelong naturalist, former Forest Service honcho, and a retired executive for the National Wildlife Federation, dispels wildlife fallacies that have passed through generations of well-intended grandfathers and poorly informed folk tales. Shedd covers everything about most backyard critters--from gray squirrels to newts--and expands on some wilder species that we only think we understand. But Shedd's refreshing anecdotes aren't entirely naysaying. In fact, he confirms many myths with a bit of explanatory elaboration. Take the raven's knack for mimicry, for example; it's entirely capable of uttering "nevermore" if it desires. And while bats aren't entirely blind, Shedd writes, they rely largely on echolocation to navigate, bouncing high-frequency shrieks off nearby objects, sometimes in the range of 115 kilohertz (a human's range goes to a mere 20 kHz). While these details gives us some solid facts to gnash on, it's Shedd's personal anecdotes (much to the dismay of his resilient Labrador Heidi, who, while accompanying Shedd, has been jumped by muskrats and porcupines, among other things) that elevate his information to entertainment. Retelling stories from his boyhood in Vermont and from his professional work, he takes the reader on a ride through familiar territory: describing roadside carcasses, trash-ravaging raccoons, and clumsy coyotes, among other encounters. To keep us current, however, Shedd updates ongoing conservation efforts and opens an occasional window into his own personal opinions on wildlife management. We're left with a satisfying, inspiring handbook to some of North America's most familiar and erroneously understood creatures. --Lolly Merrell

owls aren't wise:
Mr. Shedd brings wisdom & humor to his subject. It is a book that could be enjoyed by adults or read to small children. It's great to have a book that dispells so many myths.

bats aren't blind, they just don't see too well:
Warner Shedd reveals his wealth of knowledge about the outdoors in a style that is pure Vermonter. Although it seems as though at times he is refuting a so-called myth by re-stating the myth as fact, Shedd's enthusiasm for his subject and willingness to share personal anectdotes overcomes his sometimes pedantic style. The illustrations are a capable addition to the book, and anyone who comes to this well will go away knowing a bit more about their subject. My irrational exuberance is not all just because the author is my Mother's sister's husband! Good luck, Uncle Warner!

Works too hard on the "debunking":
The authors are too intent on "debunking". Sometimes they get facts wrong in their eagerness to debunk myths (e.g., one of their "myths" is "Polar bears are white". Which they are, at least approximately. The _hair_ of polar bears isn't white. It's transparent (think fiber optics). But polar bears themselves are not transparent. Crows can probably count, too - the brighter parrots can, and corvidae and psitacidae seem to be of roughly equivalent intelligence). And some of the myths seem to have been made up largely so they could be debunked. Aside from that, it's not bad.

Warner Shedd offers a new pair of glasses:
Warner Shedd's book has deepened my whole family's enjoyment of the animals in our midst. We have read it to the kids before bed and shared it with company. After reading a chapter I feel as refreshed as I would after a leisurely stroll through the woods. I live surrounded by red squirrels, but it was not until I read Owls Aren't Wise & Bats Aren't Blind that I could really see them. Shedd articulated what my peripheral senses have been barraged with all these years, and brought these cute rascals into focus for the first time. Likewise, my rodent-phobic mother has grown positively fond of the muskrat who visits her suburban yard (It better stay out of the house though.). Shedd helped her identify the animal and understand what a positive contribution it made to her environment. My son recently found a dead porcupine in the woods. Shedd's book got us looking at its quills under the microscope and equipped us to make an educated guess about its demise.

Superior North American wildlife book:
I didn't really think that owls were wise, but these things are relative. Owls are probably "wiser" than sparrows, but certainly not in the same IQ league as ravens and crows. And, although I didn't suppose that bats were completely blind (Shedd assures us that "most actually see quite well"), I knew they didn't depend on their eyes to catch prey. There is a lot of other "obvious" and generally well-known information here, but there is also a wealth of knowledge about thirty or so of the familiar animals of North America that I didn't know or even suspect. I didn't realize, for example, that there are "frequency modulation" (FM) bats as well as ones that use a "constant frequency" (CF), and a third group (CF-FM types) that use both methods of echolocation to zero in on prey. For another example, while I knew that grizzlies are bigger than black bears, I didn't know that Alaskan brown bears are the biggest bears of all, and are not just another name for grizzlies. What makes this a superior book on the wildlife of North America is the wealth of experience that Shedd brings to the subject and his imminently readable style, combining lots of concrete fact with well-told anecdote. He does an especially good job of clearly defining each species. The chapter on bears is as vivid and memorable as a PBS special. The easy reading (and this is always the case) belies what I know was the very hard work that went into the construction of every sentence. Typical of Shedd's illustrative style (in the floral mode) is this description from page 68: "...a bat's flight is as unpredictable and indecipherable as the movements of a prestidigitator's hands." Additionally there are a number of beautiful full-page black and white illustrations of the animals by Trudy Nicholson that delight the eye. She has the knack of not only accurate detail, as Shedd notes in the Acknowledgments, but of infusing the animals with a sense of an appropriate and pleasing emotional aspect. Politically speaking, and every wildlife book in this day and age has its political position, this book steers a middle course. Shedd, himself a hunter and a conservationist, eschews both the tree-hugging sentimentality of the left and the purely commercial mentality of the right. Attractive and popular, Owls Aren't Wise and Bats Aren't Blind, would make an ideal present for anyone interested in wildlife, from grandchildren to grandparents.