Art: Audubon's Heir

In some ways, Athos Menaboni is a better bird painter than was the great John James Audubon. He lacks Audubon's infallibly dramatic sense of composition and of action, but Menaboni is even more accurate about details and he comes closer to approximating the faintly metallic sheen of plumage in paint. So it is no wonder that Menaboni's Birds (Rinehart; $10) has become one of the season's most successful art books, selling out its first 25,000-copy printing before publication.

A lean little sparrow hawk of a man, sharp-beaked, with bright hazel eyes, Menaboni roams the Georgia swamps and forests, hunting birds with a...