Keith L. Bildstein

I would rate this higher for myself personally, but it's a bit more technical than the ordinary reader might want. Fortunately, Keith concludes most chapters with a "Summary and Conclusions" section that does a good summing up and there's a good glossary. The photos, however, could have been better and clearer (all b&w and inked onto the page, not as glossy plates), but this was written at a time when Keith didn't have the influence that he would today with the academic press.

Keith is the now-retired conservation director of Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, about twenty miles north of Reading PA, the first raptor sanctuary and major migration-tracking center in the world. Rachel Carson relied on Hawk Mountain migration statistics when writing Silent Spring.

These migrating raptors aren't just migrants. Some of them, perhaps blown off course by the winds, become immigrants when they finally alight on a new wintering ground and for whatever reason decide to remain there, not returning to their former spring breeding grounds. Assuming the new wintering ground has sufficient food and the raptor population is large enough, these "immigrants" can wind up developing over time into a new species.… (mais)

A reader looking for a more "popular" read should take a look at Katie Fallon's Vulture: The Private Life of an Unloved Bird. Raptors: The Curious Nature of Diurnal Birds of Prey is a more "scientific" read, but don't be intimidated by that because Keith Bildstein's book includes a very helpful and thorough glossary of scientific terms and concludes each chapter with a series of summary items. Vulture and Raptors can most profitably be read as a pair, probably reading Vulture first for a "popular" read.

The longest chapter of Raptors is on migration – understandably, because that is a heavy emphasis at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary (located just about twenty miles north of Reading, PA), from which Keith has recently retired as Director of Conservation Science, but Raptors also includes comprehensive overviews of such subjects as anatomy, breeding, feeding, and environmental and human threats to raptor survival.… (mais)