Back in mid-September I reviewed Anthony McGeehan’s “Birding From the Hip“, the third book published by the innovative and highly talented ‘Sound Approach’ team in as many years (the first was 2006’s superb and highly-recommended “Sound Approach to Birding“). At the end of the review (which was positive throughout but not for reasons that the next statement might suggest), I rather cheekily wrote that if the publishers would like to send me a copy of ‘Petrels night and day’ - the second book in the series - to review “I promise I’ll get down to reading it as soon as it arrives”.

Within a week the book arrived (boy, did I ever feel like I’d arrived as a reviewer of relevance - no, not really, but boy, was I ever grateful) and true to my word I began reading it the very same day. Rather shamefully what I didn’t get round to doing as quickly was writing a review. Not, I hasten to add, because I couldn’t think of anything to say or because I hated the thing. Neither is remotely true (and I have no excuse really, but, you know, some weeks are busier than others…)

Anyway, enough of my rather pathetic attempts to explain my inaction. Let me get down to telling you why even if - like me - you know virtually nothing about Western Palearctic petrels and have seen no more than a handful of petrels anywhere in the world you still should buy this book.

Covering all twenty-two species of petrels and shearwaters * breeding in the Western Palearctic (a figure which includes proposed splits - eg Grant’s Petrel - that on the basis of what’s in this book will surely be accepted at some point), the beautifully produced “Petrels night and day” (PNAD) is part ID guide, part sound library, and part adventure story.

Hosted by Magnus Robb, a Scottish ‘Procellarophile’ who has spent - by all accounts - the best part of the last decade having the most fantastic time climbing jagged peaks in Madeira, being spat on by Fulmars in Orkney (they’re not called ‘foul maws’ for nothing, the smell of fulmar oil is the avian equivalent of skunk spray), narrowly avoiding being ripped apart on reefs off the Cape Verde Islands (Chapter 8, White-faced Storm Petrel), or sitting in darkness on remote islands feeling the breeze of wings on his face (often and all over the place - the lucky chap!), PNAD is enthralling, entertaining, informative, and lavishly illustrated.

Each chapter is told from Magnus’s personal perspective, and it’s a superb way to involve us the (probably non-expert) reader in what could have been a fairly academic text which uses phrase lengths, the timbre of exhaled and inhaled notes, and the rate of ‘chatter notes’ to differentiate between sexes and species of a group that most of us will never see well at sea let alone at the breeding colony (many of which are highly susceptible to disturbance and require permits to visit). Every page is steeped in atmosphere and environment. There are quotations from earlier seabird pioneers carefully used throughout the text, but it’s Magnus’s own descriptions of place, of how he feels when he’s observing and recording, which make the more ‘difficult’ paragraphs of research and sonograms that much more easy to become involved in. He takes us with him on his journies rather than invite us to a lecture on what he’s done when he gets back home. He makes it very easy to forget just how much effort and commitment has gone into this book: he’s travelled thousands of miles, stayed up through countless nights, poked his microphone into burrows on remote islets across most of Europe, but there is absolutely no sense whatsoever of hardship or of wanting you the reader to know what he’s been through to bring you the reader such ground-breaking data and information.

In fact he remains constantly courteous and good humoured, self-deprecating even: there is a lovely paragraph on page 136 which is prefaced with a description of him laying back and listening through headphones to the recordings he’s making of Balearic Shearwaters which runs: “I recall being quite surprised to see 37 minutes on the timer…when I listened to the recording later, a sort of deep, walrus-like sound appeared after about 24 minutes. Intermittent and quiet at first, it got louder and more persistent towards the end. Just before 37 minutes it stopped. This is the first time I ever heard the sound of my own snoring!”

As far as I can tell those 13 minutes of ‘walrus-like sound’ didn’t make it to the final versions of the two CDs that come with PNAD.

Anyone familiar with the Sound Approach format will know that the three books they’ve published so far come with extremely ‘clean’ recordings that are constantly referred to in the main text and which are used as both sonic illustrations and research information. They are beautifully recorded and in many cases unique - certainly so in the case of many of the 127 (!) different tracks that make up PNAD’s two CDs. It’s not just the fact that many of these calls (you’d be hard-pushed to describe a petrel vocalisation as a ’song’) are rare or unique that makes them so relevant. In the preface to PNAD Magnus makes a special plea for us to listen to the recordings through headphones, saying that “Most were recorded in ambient stereo using a special piece of equipment…I am not aware of another technique that would capture the experience of being in a colony so well.”

I’m not in the least technically-informed enough to be able to put forward a counter argument, but I imagine he’s absolutely right anyway. Try, for example, listening to CD2: Track 22 (which was recorded by Arnoud van den Berg) on headphones while reading the text account of “sitting in a completely dark cave at midday” perched high above the sea on an islet off Sicily. Just 60 seconds long it perfectly captures the distant gurgle of the swell at the ‘bottom’ of the sound-field, the drip of water off the rocks in the middle distance, and the chatters and chirps off to the left and right of the birds.

In other recordings (most of which were made by Magnus) petrels dive into your left ear, race through your head, and disappear out of your right ear into a velvety darkness, purr from beneath your feet, or bounce in and out of a soundscape dominated by the ‘motorbike revvings’ of Puffins. They are just wonderful to listen to, and, yes, we’re all busy, but - seriously - give yourself a break and take a little time off to listen to them in comfort. They’re worth it.

(As a quick side-thought in the not too distant past these recordings would have been available only on cassette, in little plastic boxes that came with a printed insert, and an index. Now they come in a whole book at no extra cost! It’s quite incredible value in a world where everything seems to be more expensive or designed to break the minute the warranty runs out. I’m not in any way belittling the efforts of the sound recordists that came before the Sound Approach team incidentally: they had to make do with the available technology and I imagine they must have silently cursed the hissy backgrounds and magnetic tape that was liable to stretch or snap at any moment. I’m just amazed how far the medium has developed in the last decade.)

If PNAD were just text and recordings it would be valuable and informative enough to urge anyone interested in petrels, shearwaters, or birding adventure to buy it immediately anyway, but - as I mentioned at the top of this review - it is also part ID guide. Fully utilising the ‘landscape’ format that is as diagnostic of a Sound Approach book as the inclusion of CDs, PNAD is stuffed with glorious photographs (of birds and habitats/scenery) AND eighteen plates of Killian Mullarney’s wonderful paintings.

I would imagine that most birders will be familiar with Killian’s work (perhaps through the award-winning Collins Bird Guide). An exceptional artist he is particularly good at capturing jizz/Giss, and the plates in PNAD are some of his best. Looking somewhat like highly-polished field sketches the beautifully detailed illustrations are annotated in a ‘hand-written’ font style and are extremely informative. They are also - I’m sure - going to be extremely accurate, and show nuances like the ’silky sheen in sunlight’ on the underwing of a Madeiran Storm Petrel, how the tones of Sooty Shearwaters change so much in differing light conditions that they “may appear to be a different species”, or the subtle differences in shape between Barolo’s and Boyd’s Shearwaters. (No, I’m not familiar with these species either, but I know a darn good illustration when I see one!)

It’s made clear in the Acknowledgements at the start of the book that PNAD ‘has benefited from the assistance and generosity of a great many people’. I’m sure it has, but even with that generosity there’d have been no guarantee of producing a book of scholarship and erudition that people actually want to go out and buy. Magnus Robb has taken his love of these often almost-unknown birds and created something magical, engrossing, and immensely beautiful. Add in the recordings, the photographs, and the paintings, and we’re being offered a product (and I almost hate to use the word to describe PNAD) that IMHO re-defines what a family monograph should look like. It’s a wonderful achievement (and entirely typical, it seems, of whatever the Sound Approach team turn their attention to).

In the last chapter Magnus writes with great feeling about the rare (probably Endangered given the state of the Yellow Sea where most breed) Swinhoe’s Petrel, a bird he’s not yet seen. On the last page he says that, “I hope I will never be cured of my addiction to petrels, listening and puzzling while totally immersed in their world” and finishes the text by musing about looking for a Swinhoe’s in a colony of British Storm Petrels in Kerry, Ireland, with the words, “I think that’s where I’ll try next”.

That last line sums up everything about this book for me: the sense of adventure, the intellect behind his journeying, the scale of his imaginings. I hope he does try Kerry next, and I hope he takes his recording equipment, his sense of humour, and his notebook with him, because I for one want to read all about it in “Petrels night and day: Volume Two”.

*Species covered: Zino’s Petrel, Fea’s Petrel, Desertas Petrel, Bulwer’s Petrel, Cory’s Shearwater, Scopoli’s Shearwater, Cape Verde Shearwater, Great Shearwater, Barolo’s Shearwater, Boyd’s Shearwater, Manx Shearwater, Balearic Shearwater, Yelkouan Shearwater, Northern Fulmar, White-faced Storm Petrel, European Storm Petrel, Mediterranean Storm Petrel, Leach’s Storm Petrel, Grant’s Storm Petrel, Monteiro’s Storm Petrel, Madeiran Storm Petrel, Cape Verde Storm Petrel and Swinhoe’s Storm Petrel.

Petrels Night and Day: A Sound Approach Guide. Magnus Robb and the Sound Approach. 300 pages, 18 painted plates, numerous color photographs, figs and maps. 2 CDs, 127 recordings.
ISBN-13: 9789081093323