Reviews 337 Once A River: Bird Life and Habitat Changes on the Middle Gila. By Amadeo M. Rea, illustrated by Takashi Ijichi. (Tucson: University of Ari zona Press, 1983. 285 pages, $24.50.) Once A River documents the changes in distribution of central Arizona bird life over the past four centuries. In doing so, it synthesizes methods and material from anthropology, ecology, history, and ornithology. The result is a text that offers a fresh model for examining western history and environment. Rea limits his study area to the Gila River Indian Reservation. A careful and professional ornithologist, he has collected an impressive array of refer ence specimens and accounts. More importantly, he goes beyond pure science to include ethnographic information gathered from the Pima Indians. Rea spent five years teaching on the reservation, and he is familiar not only with Piman, Papago, and Maricopa languages and cultures, but also with the literature and theory of a growing discipline, ethnozoology. He divides the book two ways. Part One contains overview chapters, which present and discuss the Pima tribe, historical accounts of plant and animal life, interrelationships between birds and reservation habitats, and so on. Part Two provides specific accounts of bird species and their distribu tion. Depending on the available facts, these entries are composed of six sections: archaeology, ethnography, historic and modern status, taxonomy, and change. (The last summarizes the trends demonstrated by the previous five.) Lovely Hohokam-inspired sketches accompany these. One does not have to be a bird watcher to find the accounts of Part Two of interest. For example, the Pima called pelicans chuawgiakam vakoiii; roughly translated, this is “heron with a net” — the net being the pelican’s elastic throat pouch. This is more than just trivia. Not only is it a good metaphor, but it tells us something definite about Piman categories of percep tion. For another instance, historians will find Rea’s parrot entry useful — he compares archaeological finds with native legends and Spanish accounts in order to reach conclusions about the disruption of south-to-north 18thcentury indigenous trade routes. And of course if one is a birder then Once A River makes an even more useful addition to one’s library, and belongs next to Birds of Arizona by Phillips, Marshall, and Monson. From its description of hawk fossils to the photographs of marsh land being bulldozed, this book offers commentary on a much broader region than just the Middle Gila. Today the Middle Gila is, as the Colorado has been called, “a river no more.” However great or small a loss in itself, the devasta tion of riparian habitat on the Gila is indicative of land use patterns through out the entire Southwest. From California to Texas, native grasslands, bosques , and cienegas have been eliminated or reduced to isolated remnants. Once A River traces these environmental changes. It is a creative, detailed look at Arizona avifauna and, more uniquely, an indictment against European-era land ethics — all the more damning since it is based upon so many sources. CHARLES HOOD, Glendale, California ...