Bob Levy

Most birding narratives are about people with much more birding experience than you, going places you probably don’t have the time or money to visit, and seeing birds you’ve probably never seen. Club George breaks all these rules; it’s by and about a beginning birder in Central Park, and there are maybe a dozen or so species mentioned, with rare exception all among the most common in the eastern United States. It would be possible to write a very interesting book from these circumstances, but this isn’t it.

During a period of unemployment, Bob Levy starts regularly birding in Central Park, or, more specifically, regularly visiting a particular pond where a Red-winged Blackbird he calls George lives. (Unlike many birding books, which omit the practice in the name of “readability”, Levy correctly capitalizes species names. Unfortunately he also incorrectly capitalizes generic names, such as “Oak Tree”.) He becomes very invested in the life of George and a few other bids he sees regularly, following them through the breeding season and describing his observations of their behavior. This sort of close observations of individuals has the potential to be very interesting, and the attention to detail required to identify specific individual birds is commendable.

Unfortunately, the scope of the book is too narrow, and the birds’ behavior too influenced by humans, for these observations to be very interesting; I found myself bored halfway through with endless repetitions of "George flew to the railing. I fed him a peanut. He flew back to the nest, and I looked for nestlings. I didn't see them." While there are interesting quotes from a Red-winged Blackbird expert, Levy doesn't seem terribly interested in the birds other than as individuals. He has the common city-dweller pattern of caring about individual animals rather than species or ecosystems, and is as upset at the prospect of a bird being eaten by a hawk as by being crowded out by the introduced House Sparrows. He never birds anywhere other than Central Park, or even shows any interest in birds other than the few he can identify as individuals; it would have been very interesting if he'd gone out to one of the large post-breeding staging grounds for redwings, to see them in the flocks of thousands he alludes to (and which, for me, still seem like the more normal numbers to see them in), but apparently if he can't pick George out of the crowd he's just not interested, because he never even considers the possibility. Instead, the book ends as soon as George leaves the pond, and Levy's interest in birding apparently does as well.

I'm not really sure who would enjoy this book. People with no interest at all in birds would have no reason to pick it up, and avid
birders are likely to be bored by it and annoyed at the self-congratulatory tone and complete lack of curiosity about birds
anywhere other than one small corner of Central Park. Perhaps people in the author's exact situation -- New Yorkers with a budding interest in birds or in nature, who are heartened to learn that anything other than sparrows and pigeons makes a home in the city, would be interested, but outside of that narrow audience it doesn't have much to recommend it. This is not a bad book, just not a good one.… (mer)