Sandilands, Al 1946- (A.P. Sandilands, Allan P. Sandilands)

PERSONAL:

Born 1946.

ADDRESSES:

E-mail—grayowlenvironmental@sympatico.ca.

CAREER:

Ecologist and environmental consultant. Gray Owl Environmental, Inc., Canada, senior ecologist and principal.

WRITINGS:

Birds of Ontario: Habitat Requirements, Limiting Factors, and Status, with illustrations by Ross James, UBC Press (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

Al Sandilands is a Canadian ecologist and environmental consultant. Born in 1946, Sandilands took an interest in the native environment of Canada, particularly that of its birds. He has served as the senior ecologist and principal for Gray Owl Environmental, Inc., of Canada.

In 2005 Sandilands published Birds of Ontario: Habitat Requirements, Limiting Factors, and Status with illustrations by Ross James through the University of British Columbia Press. Sandilands, with his experience in studying birds, paired up with James, an ornithologist with experience in illustrating birds since the 1970s, to create an encompassing text on the birdlife found throughout the Canadian province of Ontario. The book is geared toward wildlife biologists, environmental consultants, and environmental planners and assessors, with the intent of being a reference source. Although focused on Ontario, the birdlife of the province is widely found in surrounding Canadian provinces and nearby American states, allowing its use to expand to serious bird watchers of the region. The account focuses on the birds' habitat, factors that limit their range, and the status of eighty-four species of nonpasserines (non-perching birds) through breeding, migration, and winter seasons. Sandilands also includes maps showing each of the birds' range, breeding grounds, and where they reside during winter months.

A contributor to SciTech Book News noted only "minor quibbles with an otherwise excellent treatment" to the topic of the book. In that, the critic mentioned an unusually light text color and the lack of a definition for readers unfamiliar with the word "nonpasserines."

Sandilands told CA: "Birds fascinated me from an early age. Later in life, as I evolved into a wildlife biological and environmental consultant, birds became a large part of my profession. It became necessary to predict impacts that various types of development might have on birds and other wildlife groups, and to recommend measures that would stop or reverse factors that were causing declines in species at risk. Unfortunately, there was no single book that described the habitat requirements of bird species and the factors that limited their populations. After waiting in vain for decades for someone else to write this book, I decided to do it myself. It has been a rewarding journey, and I have learned much along the way."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Canadian Book Review Annual, January 1, 2005, Janet Arnett, review of Birds of Ontario: Habitat Requirements, Limiting Factors, and Status, p. 406.

Quarterly Review of Biology, March 1, 2006, Rob Rempel, review of Birds of Ontario, p. 74.

SciTech Book News, September 1, 2005, review of Birds of Ontario.