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When it comes to the naming of birds, we live in turbulent times. The recent decision by the American Ornithological Society – to rename every North American species named after a historical person – has prompted a lively debate. It has even led to calls for the National Audubon Society to drop the name of the best-known bird artist in history, John James Audubon himself. The publication of The Birds That Audubon Missed is therefore timely. It helps us to appreciate and understand not just Audubon, but other early North American ornithologists, who discovered and named so many species we still see today.

Who better to undertake this mammoth task than naturalist, artist and author Kenn Kaufman? For me, Kaufman ranks alongside Pete Dunne and Scott Weidensaul in the highest echelon of North American writers about birds. Like them, he has a deep appreciation of the history of birding and is a true master of storytelling.

From the first page, Kaufman uses his creative skills to bring history to life. The reader is able to feel what it must have been like to be John James Audubon, travelling north on a boat off the coast of Labrador, in the summer of 1833. His aim? To discover new species of birds, hitherto undescribed to science. Kaufman skilfully interweaves this story with Audubon’s reflections of his life so far. Then he turns the narrative on its head: making us question everything we thought we knew about this enigmatic man, and raising doubts about whether much of the accepted story of his life is actually true.

Like all top nature writers, Kaufman is not afraid to place himself at the centre of his story – but he does so with subtlety and humility, as our trusted guide. He unravels this complex and dramatic story not just for us, but also for himself, probing thoughtfully into the nature of our historical relationship with birds – and with those who found and named them.

I especially enjoyed his childhood recollections of ‘discovering’ new birds, and then being brought down to earth by a schoolteacher, who casually explained that he hadn’t actually discovered the birds at all, as they were already well known. Far from putting off the young Kenn, this spurred him on to make new discoveries, as he still does today. He also brilliantly evokes the nature of modern birding: the raw thrill of listening to migrants flying overhead at dawn. And, as we would expect from the successor to the legendary Peterson, Kaufman has illustrated this book beautifully with his own artwork, often placed directly alongside that of the legendary Audubon.

Most of all, he teaches us to appreciate the huge differences in perspective between today’s birders – with our high-tech optical aids, comprehensive field guides and apps that automatically identify the bird – and those brave pioneers, who had to work out everything for themselves. They include many who are still – for the moment at least – commemorated in official bird names. We meet Charles Lucien Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon; John Bachman, whose eponymous warbler is now considered extinct; and Scottish émigré Alexander Wilson – of warbler, petrel, plover and phalarope fame – who fled his native home to avoid persecution, starting again from scratch in a new and unfamiliar land.

Kaufman also makes room for equally important explorers and ornithologists whose achievements were not commemorated in the name of a species. These include Mark Catesby, a young Englishman who, in the early eighteenth century, was the first to try to get to grips with the unfamiliar birds of his adopted home.

While he celebrates these people’s achievements, Kaufman also takes a more objective view. We share his bewilderment that the leading ornithologists of the day missed so many common and familiar birds. The Philadelphia Vireo Vireo philadelphicus, a widespread and distinctive bird, eluded both Wilson and Audubon, and was not finally described until February 1851, shortly after Audubon’s death. Yet he also empathises with the many difficulties they faced: mounting expeditions to remote and dangerous places, and needing to raise money to support these, via subscriptions from wealthy admirers on both sides of the Atlantic.  

In a chapter, entitled ‘Fugitive Warblers’, Kaufman patiently untangles the complex web of confusion caused by the various spring, fall and immature plumages of what we now call the New World warblers, but which were split, lumped, and some even designated as flycatchers by those early ornithologists. He also reveals that Bachman’s Warbler Vermivora bachmanii, which almost certainly went extinct in the 1960s or soon afterwards, would have been fairly common as recently as the final decade of the nineteenth century, following which it underwent a sudden – and terminal – population crash, for reasons unknown.

As a reader, I felt drawn into these stories, which left me with a real sense of loss: not just of the birds that have disappeared, but also of the thrill of discovery, a theme that runs right through the book. What would any of us give to be transported back through time for just one day, to experience such uncountable numbers of birds? One sentence he quotes, from Audubon’s diary of that summer 1833 trip to Labrador, is especially poignant: ‘They [Eskimo Curlews] evidently came from the north, and arrived in such dense flocks as to remind me of the Passenger Pigeons.’

Both the Eskimo Curlew Numenius borealis and Passenger Pigeon Ectopistes migratorius, which less than 200 years ago could be found in flocks so vast they were uncountable, have long since gone extinct.

Towards the end of his story, Kaufman returns to the contentious issue of replacing eponymous bird names. Like me, and many others, he agrees with the need to remove names that are anathema to many Americans – especially people of colour – but also laments the loss of historical understanding that might result from such a wholesale change. Ironically, though, by documenting these people’s history in such gripping detail, he has guaranteed that their achievements will endure long after the names have been changed. 

Like all good storytellers, Kenn Kaufman ends his book with an anecdote that takes us back to his own beginnings. While walking along a woodland trail just outside Philadelphia, he comes across a family with two excited young girls, marvelling at a Grey Catbird Dumetella carolinensis, a species they clearly haven’t encountered before: ‘“This is what matters,” I said to myself. We may remember those who found creatures considered new to science, but the magic happens on the personal level, when they are new to us. And the potential for such finds is always there. Miracles wait for us around every corner.’ 

As a description of why, even after a lifetime’s birding, we continue to venture out into the field with the hope of discovering new birds, this is hard to beat. 

Stephen Moss