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Video review -- The Small Gulls



I just received a copy of the Advanced Birding Video Series -- The Small
Gulls of North America, narrated by Jon Dunn.  As most of you know, the
The Large Gulls of North America video came out a few years ago, and it
is quite excellent.  This new video is spectacular.

The video is 177 minutes long. That right, almost three hours, just
slightly shorter than War and Peace! I actually sat down and watched it
in its entirety, of course reading a newspaper, doing laundry, etc.,
while watching. I have trouble sitting through 31 minutes of Mew Gull
(all four subspecies covered).  The video covers only 14 species -- that
comes to 12-13 minutes per species! This video has the really rare gulls
that hardly anyone in the Carolinas has the "complete set" -- Ross',
Ivory, Red-legged Kittiwake, Sabine's, etc. All of the black-headed
species are covered, as are Ring-billed, Mew, Heermann's, and
Black-tailed.

It is exceptional in coverage, and probably in accuracy. The only
bothersome error is Jon's continued mispronunciation of "nuchal",  the
collar area.  There are only two vowels in the word, and thus two
syllables -- NOO-kul. Yet, about 15 times Jon says NOO-kee-ul. I'm
surprised an editor didn't catch this! Must have studied pronunciation
of words beginning with "nuc" from Jimmy Carter (who pronounced
"nuclear" as either NOO-kee-ur or NOO-kee-lur, instead of NOO-klee-ur).

You might want to look at the video is sort bursts rather than all the
way through. Most of the species are not overly hard to separate from
other species, unlike the larger gulls -- Yellow-legged, Iceland, etc.

The video will certainly make you want to travel somewhere to the Arctic
to see these birds -- Churchill, Gambell, The Pribilofs, etc.!  I still
need to see an Ivory Gull in the wild, but I missed it in Gambell.

The video is listed in the recent ABA Sales catalog for Spring 2000.

Harry LeGrand


--
Harry LeGrand
NC Natural Heritage Program
1615 MSC
Raleigh, NC 27699-1615
(919) 715-8687 (work)
FAX: 919-715-3085
e-mail: harry.legrand@ncmail.net