The Search for the Pink-headed Duck by Rory Nugent. First published 1991. As reviewed and pictured: softcover, 223 pages.
The Search for the Pink-headed Duck is Rory Nugent's memoir of his travels in eastern India and his search for a duck believed to be extinct and which was last seen in the 1950's.
Nugent hopes to search for the Pink-headed Duck in certain parts of India where it happens to be difficult to obtain a tourist visa. This leads to him spending a great deal of time in and out of bureaucratic offices in Delhi, with a lot of downtime between official visits. Eventually he does get moving, first to places like the poultry markets of Calcutta, and then to hiding in the back of a jeep to travel outside the boundary of his visa, to the outskirts of Sikkim and Darjeeling and Assam, and finally down the Brahmaputra in a hand-made skiff with an Indian friend met only weeks earlier.
Nugent spends a lot of time with interesting characters, including a "gentleman outlaw" smuggler, Gurkha freedom fighters, Tibetan lamas, and a Tantrika (one who follows the Trantric Way). Between the outlandish Indian characters, Nugent befriends many more locals in all of his travels, certainly adding a richness to his own experience and to the book.
The book is a great travel adventure yarn, which is a genre I love. However, the search for the rare, possibly extinct Pink-headed Duck feels like an afterthought sometimes, and I did wish for more background on the bird itself, and possibly more time (or pages) devoted to the search for the duck and other birds (Nugent claims to be a birdwatcher, after all). I give The Search for the Pink-headed Duck 3.5 Goldfinches out of 5.
Thanks to Robert of Birding is Fun for letting me know about this book by reviewing it on his blog.
Flyaway: How a Wild Bird Rehabber Sought Adventure and Found Her Wings by Suzie Gilbert. First published 2009. As reviewed and pictured: softcover, 340 pages. As a nature lover, I believe in helping wildlife any way I can. When it comes to rescuing wild animals in trouble, in...
Birds of the West Indies by Norman Arlott. First published 2010. Norman Arlott's Birds of the West Indies is part of Princeton University Press' Illustrated Checklist series, but the compact, fully illustrated book seems more like a full guide to me. More than 550 bird species are covered, each...
As my birding library grows, I've acquired a lot of books via trading sites like PaperBackSwap (PBS) and BookMooch (BM), or via thrift shops, used book stores, and festival fundraisers. Acquiring books this way makes the obsessive book-collecting part of this hobby a bit more affordable....
Birding Babylon: A Soldier's Journal from Iraq by Jonathan Trouern-Trend. First published 2006. Subtitled A Soldier's Journal from Iraq, Birding Babylon began life as a natural history and birding blog by a deployed National Guardsman in Iraq. The book is formatted as journal, from the faux handmade...
