The Blue Vesper, winner of the 2019 British Birds/British Trust for Ornithology Best Bird Book of the Year award, summarizes the current knowledge and science of the Red-footed Falcon (Falco vespertinus). The species derives its Latin name from the root word vesper, meaning evening. Like “Vesper” in the book's title, vesper in the species name refers to the Red-footed Falcon's unique behavior of hunting in large numbers at dusk, of gathering by the thousands at communal roosts as they stage to begin their fall migrations, and historically, of gathering in large breeding colonies in ancient times. The “Blue” in the title references the adult male's steely blue-grey plumage, which is emphasized in the species’ common name in some of the central and eastern European languages.
The Blue Vesper will be useful to knowledgeable enthusiasts interested in understanding well-established facts about Red-footed Falcon. The book's first editor, Péter Palatitz, explained at the 2019 Raptor Research Foundation meeting, “Data likely to change are not included, because we want the book to stand the test of time” (P. Palatitz pers. comm.). Peer-reviewed publications will be better for keeping up with new advances. In keeping with this focus, The Blue Vesper is written with an emphasis on illustrating well-supported information on Red-footed Falcons and does so beautifully with an array of photographs and maps. Full-page full-color photographs are generously distributed throughout each chapter to illustrate topics and focus the reader's attention and imagination on unique aspects of the Red-footed Falcon's life history. Multiple three-page fold out maps provide a level of geospatial detail rarely seen in print.
This thorough and well-rounded book includes chapters on breeding, behavior, habitats, migration, wintering, population sizes and trends, conservation in some European countries, research and monitoring, creation of natural and supplemental nests, grassland management, and conservation. Most of the data included in the book were collected by the chapter authors over the previous 20 yr and have not been published previously (P. Palatitz pers. comm.). Each of these chapters includes only 2–3 pages of text before transitioning to illustrations supporting that text. This makes the book a relatively quick and easy read.
The introductory chapter describes the species and the breeding biology, including nesting, nest timing, productivity, diet, etc. This material provides information a layperson and specialist may need to establish a basic understanding of the species. These foundational chapters are well-written, well-illustrated, and introduce the odd paradox that Red-footed Falcons breed in colonies, but do not build their own nests. These two facts become part of the crucial foundation necessary to understand the ecology and conservation of this uniquely social falcon.
With necessary baseline information succinctly provided, subsequent chapters build to explore relationships between Red-footed Falcons and co-breeding species, particularly Rooks (Corvus frugilegus) and Magpies (Pica pica), and their predators, prey, and habitat. The book describes impacts to Red-footed Falcon conservation when populations of co-breeding species change. Also detailed are impacts when human uses of the landscape changes, as has been shown during the past 30 yr.
A chapter on diseases and parasites explores relationships between colonial breeding and transmission of diseases and parasites. Many of the injuries and illnesses reported will be familiar to raptor researchers, particularly those involved with urban species. Though the Red-footed Falcon is not particularly urban, the density of the population at colonial breeding sites, has some important parallels to density of some urban raptor populations.
The Dispersal chapter includes the first two fold-out maps, one oriented east-to-west across the species' breeding range in Europe and Asia, and one oriented north-to-south from the western edge of the breeding range in Europe to the wintering range in south-central Africa. This second map beautifully consolidates information on pre-migratory communal roosts, tracks from satellite-transmittered individuals, and density of wintering populations. The migration chapters add another fold-out map to show movements of individual birds. Researchers interested in examples of how effective perfectly organized range maps can be would do well to follow the examples in this book.
From a focus on the ecology of the Red-footed Falcon in the first two-thirds of the book, the chapters pivot to discuss conservation concerns, including population sizes and trends across various countries. The book reports that “a decrease of 20–25% is evident in three generations of falcons. If [the decline] continues, the species is likely to be re-listed in a higher concern category” (page 148). Currently, the Red-Footed Falcon is listed by IUCN as “near threatened” (https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/22696432/131939286).
The Blue Vesper reports Red-footed Falcons are declining around the edges of their breeding range in countries where conservation is not emphasized, particularly where pastures and grasslands are being converted to cropland monocultures. In this, the Red-footed Falcon is but one more of many species affected by the ongoing and pervasive global loss of pastures and grasslands. The Blue Vesper's summary of anthropogenic causes of mortality is also consistent with global trends: electrocution, entanglement in human-made materials incorporated into nests, persecution (illegal trapping and shooting), and vehicle collisions.
The book transitions in successive chapters to region and country-specific chapters on conservation of Red-footed Falcons in Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia, western lowlands of Romania and Transylvania. In these chapters, (one of the book's greatest strengths), The Blue Vesper incorporates contemporary international research published in a wide variety of languages. Hungarian works are especially emphasized given the editors' collective affiliation with Birdlife Hungary. The Blue Vesper's emphasis on using carefully constructed maps to convey fine-scale detail in an easily relatable way is also again on display in these country-specific chapters. The book concludes with detailed instructions for constructing artificial nest boxes within the context of grassland management for Red-footed Falcon conservation.
Overall, the greatest strength of this book is in its consolidation of a wide variety of grey literature and peer-reviewed science on the Red-footed Falcon published in a wide variety of languages other than English. Much of the material summarized in this book would be otherwise unavailable to many readers due to either limited language skills or limited access to materials written in the diverse European and Asian languages of the primary literature. The book also serves as a foundation for new information on the Red-footed Falcon summarized as it becomes available on the website www.falcoproject.eu. Like The Blue Vesper, the supporting website emphasizes the multinational range of the Red-footed Falcon. In the case of the website, it does so with pages in English, Hungarian, Slovenian, Romanian, and Russian.
Though it is clear The Blue Vesper was written first in Hungarian and then “mirror translated” to English, this approach lends the book a unique insight into the editors’ thinking and perspective that could benefit a wide variety of researchers and conservation-minded citizens regarding the Red-footed Falcon and other raptors. The Blue Vesper offers an excellent example of how other researchers might approach summarizing the state of knowledge for other wide-ranging species routinely crossing country and continental boundaries.
