Beginning Bird Identification

Back in January 2012 I discussed how birds that look alike aren't always placed in field guides next to each other (Field-friendly bird sequence: Part one). Instead, they are arranged by presumed relationships (taxonomic order)--and these constantly changing.

Next I looked at some previous attempts to organize birds by general external physical characters. I proposed a sequence that placed all North American birds into 13 categories (Field-friendly bird sequence: Part two). Beginners should be able to quickly place a bird they see into one of these categories, then search for the exact species more accurately than in field guides ordered in taxonomic sequence.

Over the subsequent year I discussed one of the 13 categories each month. It is now completed. I've gone back and updated Part two with links to each discussion. I repeat it below for your convenience.

Swimming Waterbirds
Flying Waterbirds
Wading Waterbirds
Chicken-like Birds
Raptors
Miscellaneous Landbirds
Aerial Landbirds
Flycatcher-like Birds
Thrush-like Songbirds
Chickadee and Wren-like Songbirds
Warbler-like Songbirds
Sparrow and Finch-like Songbirds
Blackbird-like Songbirds

What do you think? Do you find these categories useful for beginning birders?

How to identify hawks and other raptorsReview: The Crossley ID Guide: Raptors

Photo from Princeton University Press.

As this blog focuses on birds and birding in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, readers may not be personally familiar with The Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds, published in 2011. That large 544 page book is stuffed to the gills with over 10,000 photos of birds from every possible angle set in museum-like panorama photographs (such as above). Each species is displayed with 3 or 4 larger images and many smaller images of as many different plumages and postures as possible. Text for each species is at a bare minimum. Richard Crossley's idea was that you could learn ID just from looking at the photos of birds alone. [I thought that not having text could also mislead. See my review of Crossley's Eastern Birds.] When the Princeton University Press offered me a review copy of Richard Crossley's latest field guide on North American raptors I jumped at the chance.

The Crossley ID Guide: Raptors (April 2013) is a 340 page book book covering the identification of 34 species of hawks, eagles, falcons, kites and other raptors found north of Mexico. As in the original Crossley guide, each page is like a museum panorama of dozens of bird photos backdropped by a photo of some well-known (often) North American scenic location. Most photo collages are 2-page spreads.

More than half the book is made of photo panoramic plates. The photos start with a couple of plates explaining the identification of each species and age. That is followed by a photo quiz plate! There are over 30 double-page plates of raptor quizzes, averaging more than 10 birds per quiz!

Whereas the original Crossley guide forsook text for photos, about a third of the book is textual species accounts written by raptor ID experts Jerry Ligouri and Brian Sullivan. Each species account begins with an interesting first-person introduction written from the perspective of the raptor itself--very unique! Subsequent sections in the species account include an overview, flight style, shape and size, plumage, geographic variation, molt, similar species, hybrids, status and distribution, migration, and vocalizations. Large 3-color maps show the breeding, resident, and winter ranges. The final 20 pages or so give the answers to the photo quizzes.

Three books in one!

• Annotated ID plates similar to the original Crossley ID Guide to birds.
• Expert in-depth species accounts covering status, distribution, and detailed plumage and flight style ID.
• Photo quizzes and answers.

I really like this book. It teaches identification through both numerous photos and expert text. The photo quizzes aren't just a quick glance and a look at the answers. I went through the 15 images of birds on the flying Acciptiers quiz page and wrote down my answers. Twice. Then I looked at the ones I wasn't quite sure about to choose a final answer. My results? I got 13 of 15 correct, and feel like I improved my identification skills! Who could ask for more?

For your convenience you can follow the link below to order this book from Amazon. And, yes, a very small percentage of the sale will go to me.

Review: "New" Stokes Field Guides -- East and West

I was quite impressed with the 2010 Stokes Field Guide to the Birds of North America. So when Lillian Stokes asked me to review their new (2013) Eastern and Western field guides I looked forward to it with great anticipation.

The reason the 2010 Stokes guide was so good was that it used numerous photos of different plumages. Additionally, it was the first field guide to really describe all the variations of subspecies--with photos of many different-looking forms. The book had ample text, too, explaining ID, songs, and identifying birds in flight. To aid the user in general bird identification techniques the Stokes guide emphasized shape as the first ID criterion, before discussing color patterns. It is simply the best photographic field guide for North American Birds and competes nicely with the Sibley and National Geographic guides. [See my review of the 2010 guide.]

That said, however, The New Stokes Field Guide to Birds (Eastern Region and Western Region) is simply a marketing version of their landmark 2010 book. I understand the reasons for producing Eastern and Western versions of their popular field guide. At 800 pages, their original was too large to carry into the field. So it made sense to create less costly guides with 500 (Eastern) and 575 (Western) pages. There's nothing wrong with these guides--the praise for the original guide still applies. For these "new" versions, if a species occurs east of the 100th meridian the publisher took the species photos and text in toto from the continent-wide guide and put it in the Eastern Guide. Same for the Western guide west of the 100th meridian. The only changes are updates to some of the scientific names (no more Dendroica warblers) and a split that gave us back the gallinule.

Since there were no changes to the text and photos in the Eastern and Western versions (except for a juvenile Saw-whet Owl), it creates some real oddities. For instance, of the five subspecies of White-crowned Sparrow, one subspecies occurs in the East, four in the West. However, the Eastern field guide shows photos of 2 Western subspecies and describes them in the text. Photos in the Eastern field guide of Song Sparrow show two from California, one from British Columbia, and one from Alaska--all of forms that look significantly different than Eastern forms of Song Sparrows. The Eastern guide describes 17 subspecies of Fox Sparrows in 4 groups, but only one subspecies of Fox Sparrow is found regularly in the East. Five of seven photos of Fox Sparrows are of forms that do not occur in the East. I think it would have been less confusing to show only the forms found in each region. It would have saved many more pages of the field guides, especially in the East. Perhaps more photos of different plumages of the correct subspecies could have been shown instead.

If one already owns the 2010 Stokes Field Guide to North America (north of Mexico), then I see no benefit to purchasing one of the regional guides. However, these regional guides are smaller and lower priced than the original. If one does not own the 2010 version then they should very definitely pick up the original or one of these "new" 2013 regional guides. They'd make great gifts.

Book Review: How to Be a Better Birder

Princeton University Press recently sent me a review copy of the new book How to Be a Better Birder by Derek Lovich.

Improving birding skills is a subject near and dear to my heart. I was wondering if any new information really could be said about this subject that hasn't already been covered by excellent recent similar titles (see my previous post, Advanced birding means learning the basics, which introduce Kaufman's Advanced Birding, Sibley's Birding Basics, and Alderfer and Dunn's Birding Essentials).

Frankly, I was confused when I started reading--I wasn't sure where it was going--it was more story than instruction. However, it became increasingly more interesting and useful when it tied up introductory chapter titles such as Birding by Habitat, Birding with Geography, and Birding and Weather with the culmination in Chapter 5 of Birding at Night--an excellent how-to primer of using NEXRAD weather radar on the web to observe bird migration in real time. This book cleared up the questions I had about this subject--and made me excited to delve into it a bit more.

For instance, since getting heavily interested in photographing birds in 2007 I started noticing an interesting phenomenon. On those mornings I stayed home because the rainy spring weather would be poor for photography, other birders were out discovering great birds! I should have been listening to Lovich's rule of thumb from the chapter on birding and weather: "if it begins to rain in the middle of the night during migration, go birding in the morning!"

The skills taught in this book--namely a knowledge of habitat, geography, and weather--will make one a better birder. But these are only part of a birder's fieldcraft skill set. Other than an overview of "the whole bird and more" in Chapter 1 (what, but not really how) this book doesn't discuss identification topics at all. The identification of birds by ear, identification of birds in flight, external anatomy, and molt are topics not well understood by many birders. From the title I was expecting this book would discuss these topics as well. A subtitle such as "Find more birds using habitat, geography and weather" would have cleared my initial confusion over the main subject of this book.

Now that I've got that out of the way...

Following chapters covering conservation and citizen science, Lovitch again picks up the habitat, geography, and weather theme to discuss his passion. The author uses his knowledge to pick weather patterns and locations to search for specific rarities.

The book closes with Patch Birding, becoming intimately familiar with a nearby area, birding it weekly. Of course, use your knowlege of habitat, geography, and weather to first select a good patch, then to search for new birds in your patch.

This was an enjoyable book to read, but it isn't a reference book that you'll want to return to over and over. If you want to explore the topic of birding by habitat, geography, weather, and NEXRAD, then this book is a good start.

Field-friendly bird sequencePart Two

In Part One we discussed how bird field guides traditionally have been arranged in taxonomic order--birds are ordered by presumed relationships, even if they don't necessarily look much alike. This order changes as scientists discover new relationships. Thus, the order birds appear in bird books constantly changes.

Veteran bird watchers memorize the taxonomic ordering of birds and keep up with the annual changes. But for beginners this just doesn't make sense.

In the "How to Identify Birds" section of his 1980 A Field Guide to the Birds, Roger Tory Peterson identified "Eight main visual categories" to separate birds. These categories were:
Swimmers
Aerialists
Long-legged waders
Smaller waders
Fowl-like
Birds of prey
Non-passerine land birds
Passerine (perching) birds

An article in Birding magazine in November 2009 basically repeated Peterson's list as a proposed "field-friendly sequence" (The Purpose of Field Guides: Taxonomy vs. Utility? Birding 41(6):44-49, November 2009 by Steve N.G. Howell, Michael O'Brien, Brian L. Sullivan, Christopher L. Wood, Ian Lewington, and Richard Crossley). Richard Crossley used this sequence in his 2011 bird book, The Crossley ID Guide.

The shortfall of the sequence above is that half the birds in the world are Passerines. The proposed sequence does a decent job of categorizing half the birds--the non-Passerines--but doesn't really help with our familiar backyard birds.

Two other bird books took up the challenge of categorizing the Passerines. The 1997 book by Jack L. Griggs, All the Birds of North America, divided up the Passerines based on bill size and shape. It was an interesting concept, but a little complicated. Kenn Kaufman's 2000 Birds of North America did a better job, I think.

Kaufman had the basic categories of Peterson: Aerial waterbirds, Swimming waterbirds, Waders, Fowl, and Raptors. Then he used the following sequence:
Medium-sized Land Birds
Hummingbirds, Swifts, and Swallows
Flycatchers
Typical Songbirds
Warblers
Tanagers and Blackbirds
Sparrows
Finches and Buntings

Of course, there are always some birds that don't seem to fit neatly. I thought Kaufman's "Typical Songbirds" category included too many different-appearing birds. I also felt that most beginners (those for whom this sequence would be most beneficial) could not tell many streaky female finches and buntings from streaked sparrows.

So I propose the following sequence of categories of North American birds:
Swimming Waterbirds
Flying Waterbirds
Wading Waterbirds
Chicken-like Birds
Raptors
Miscellaneous Landbirds
Aerial Landbirds
Flycatcher-like Birds
Thrush-like Songbirds
Chickadee and Wren-like Songbirds
Warbler-like Songbirds
Sparrow and Finch-like Songbirds
Blackbird-like Songbirds

A beginner should be able to quickly place a bird they see into one of these categories, and more quickly identify an unknown bird.

Future posts will discuss each category individually.

Review: Petrels, Albatrosses & Storm-Petrels of North America

Petrels, Albatrosses & Storm-Petrels of North America: A Photographic Guide by Steve N. G. Howell. 2012. Princeton University Press. Cloth. $45. 520 pages. 7 x 10 inches. Shipping weight 4 pounds. 975 photos and figures. 66 maps.

If you want only a field guide to seabirds north of Mexico, then the National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America, 6th Edition, is the only seabird guide you need to own.

However, if the sea and its specialized birds draw you to them, you'll love the treasure trove of seabird identification tips and extensive taxonomy treatments found in this scholarly, and weighty, volume. If you want to know the status, distribution, and identification of all the Procellariiformes from Panama to the Arctic, including all vagrants, then this highly anticipated book won't disappoint. If you are interested in the latest Taxonomy then this book is for you. If you are planning your next pelagic trip to the Gulf Stream in order to search for Cape Verde or Desertas Petrels or taking a cruise off western Mexico in the hopes of spotting Ainley's or Townsend's Storm-Petrels then this is a 'must-have' book.

The first 50 pages is a thorough Introduction, covering such topics as What are Tubenoses?, Ocean Habitats, Taxonomy, Field Identification, and Conservation.

The bulk of the book is the species accounts. The main headings for each species include an Identification Summary, detailed Taxonomy, Status and Distribution, and a large map showing detailed at-sea range and time of year when most frequently present.

For seabirders, the Field Identification section is wonderful. The detailed and thorough Similar Species subheading discusses how to tell each species from look-a-likes. It then goes on to describe Habitat and Behavior, and detailed plumage Descriptions, including differences between younger and older birds, and males and females, if different. A section on molt timing is useful in separating age-classes, as well as cryptic species that may look very similar but breed, and thus molt, at different times of year. Each species account has numerous photos, most by the author, with highly informative captions.

East Coast birders will not find any additional species from the Caribbean that don't reach North Carolina. However, both common and rare seabirds of western Mexico add 3 shearwaters, 5 gadfly petrels, 5 albatrosses, and 2 storm-petrels to the birds in your "North American" field guide.

I didn't find any errors in this well-researched textbook. In a work such as this it is nearly inevitable that a photo is mislabeled. But I didn't notice anything--a tribute to good editing.

You may notice that some of the Similar Species sections get repeated. The species account for Bird A tells how to separate it from Bird B. The species account for Bird B repeats nearly the exact same information to tell it apart from Bird A. I don't know any other way to do it without changing the way the species accounts are formatted. But it is such a large book that one would think a different way might have been found in order to save space.

I checked for rare bird sightings on the West Coast. The only "oversight" I noted was the failure to acknowledge a 2002 sight record of Juan Fernandez Petrel accepted by the Oregon Bird Records Committee.

Unlike the trivialities above, however, the quality of the printing is a concern to me. Many of the photos have too much red hue. In some instances gray skies are a touch pink, blue waters are purplish, sooty-gray birds are overly reddish-brown. The photos are still very usable for identification, but rather than a highlight feature to really make this book stand out, the uneven color balance for this "photographic guide" becomes a distraction to me. Perhaps it won't bother you.

In summary, this is a 'must-have' ID textbook for serious seagoing birders.

Field-friendly bird sequencePart One

It happened to most people who are now bird watchers. They saw some bird that was so colorful, or so unusually-shaped, or behaved in such an interesting manner that they decided to find out more about it. They picked up a field guide to birds...

If they are like most people they couldn't immediately find the bird. The birds seemed to be arranged randomly throughout the field guide. Eventually, in frustration, they began a page-by-page picture search trying to match what they saw with the bewildering array of birds in the field guide.

Most field guides are arranged in taxonomic order, with birds presumed to be closely related next to each other. The trouble is, birds may be closely related and not look like each other. Other birds, not closely related, can have the same basic appearance. The sequence of birds on a checklist or in a taxonomically-oriented field guide is necessarily linear, but bird relationships are web-like. And scientists are constantly rearranging the sequence!

But, if the purpose of a field guide is to truly help people identify a bird they have seen, shouldn't birds that look alike appear together in the book, regardless of constantly-shifting presumed relationships?

For instance, the Great Blue Heron (below) is known by birders and non-birders throughout North America.



Of course, many non-birders call the Great Blue Heron a "crane" or "blue crane." But herons are not cranes. They are not closely related, and are not found near each other in most field guides.

But they do share long neck and long legs in common. They are both similar in bill shape, size, and coloration. They may even be found in the same locations at the same time. Why shouldn't the Sandhill Crane (below) be placed in the field guide next to the heron?



The crane is, however, very closely related to the American Coot (below), at least, internally. But they don't look that much alike on the outside. The coot looks more like a duck than a heron. But in the field guides the coot is next to the crane, not to ducks or other waterbirds.



In fact, the coot looks quite a bit like the Pied-billed Grebe (below). But are the coot and grebe close together in the field guide? You know the answer. They are nowhere near each other!



Part Two will discuss proposed arrangements to address this problem.

Advanced birding means learning the basics

When we learned our native tongue we grew into it slowly. We spoke it at home. We slowly added vocabulary through primary school. There comes a point in middle school, though, when we are finally taught the parts of speech--nouns and verbs, how to diagram a sentence, etc. At the time we thought this unnecessary--we already knew how to read and speak--so what's the point? Learning the parts of speech and how words go together to form sentences is especially important if we try to learn another language when we are older. To advance to learn another language, or to use our native tongue properly, in all circumstances, we go back to basics and learn the rules.

Most of us came to bird watching the same way. We started slowly at first, perhaps at a home bird feeder. Then we moved farther afield and added more species. But there were always a few birds that escaped our attempts to put a name on them. Perhaps it is those streaky sparrows that give us trouble, or female ducks, or immature gulls. Like language, in order to advance in birding, we need to go back and learn the basics. We don't need to memorize more field marks (build a bigger birding list or "vocabulary")--we need to learn how to look at birds and how they are put together.

Advanced Birding, 2011 by Kenn Kaufman.
Birding Essentials, 2007 by Jonathan Alderfer and Jon L. Dunn.
Birding Basics, 2002 by David Sibley.

The books above are quite similar, all excellent, and all serve the same general purpose... to teach us how to advance in our bird spotting and identification skills. But notice that "advanced" to these authors is synonymous with understanding the "essentials" and the "basics" of identifying birds.

For argument's sake, let's define an "advanced birder" as one who can quickly and accurately identify nearly every bird seen... near or distant, well-studied or barely glimpsed, or even heard-only. (There are, of course, some individual birds that even experts can't name after extensive study, but we're not talking about those right now.)

Identifying nearly every bird you can see is not about memorizing some secret and subtle field mark. First and foremost, it is about learning the basics of how to look at birds and "understanding what you see and hear," as is the subtitle of Kaufman's book.

Like a toddler learning the parts of the face, a birder needs to intimately understand the parts of a bird, including feather groupings and names. These are often called "topology" in the introduction of many field guides. As Kaufman says, "understanding the visible structure of the bird may do more than anything else to enhance your skill at identification."


   

Best North American field guide... again!

There are 3 worthy North American field guides. But the one I carry with me on trips, the one I turn to first, has been updated to compete strongly with the others. Yes, with its 2011 printing, Jon L. Dunn and Jonathan Alderfer did it again with the National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America, now in its 6th Edition!

The back cover advertises: "America's #1 Bird Guide Just Got Even Better!". While I don't necessarily agree with the grammar, I agree with the thought.

You may argue that The Sibley Guide to Birds is your favorite. Fine. That was an amazing book when it first came out, and is still a strong contender. The songbirds shown in flight in that book still haven't been matched by any other guide. But when Sibley's guide first hit the market in 2000, the National Geo was in its 3rd Edition with just over 800 species shown, matching the 810 in Sibley. The 5th Edition of the National Geo was a complete make-over, and this 6th Edition is also a redesign--now with 990 species (including 92 Accidentals and Extinct)!

While many of the illustrations in the National Geo are familiar through all versions of the book, this 6th edition claims 300 new art pieces in addition to all the changes in the 5th Edition! Averaging over 3 illustrations per species (as opposed to 8 for Sibley), the National Geo's bird illustrations are larger and more detailed than Sibley's. I noticed many new illustrations, including standing and close-up head views of jaegers. I notice the goatsuckers no longer have "shrunken heads" as those illustrations were re-done. Many of the warblers were re-drawn. The comparison views of the foreheads of Tundra and Trumpeter Swans are a great new ID illustration.

This new edition places helpful identification text next to the illustrations, making it similar to the arrows and text in Sibley. This seems to add almost 50% more identification text than the previous edition of this guide. Imagine having an expert write additional ID comments next to each illustration in your field guide. Wow!

Following the lead of The Stokes Field Guide to the Birds of North America the new National Geographic guide also heavily stresses field identifiable subspecies, with 59 maps showing subspecies in the main text, and an additional 37 subspecies maps in the appendix.

The subspecies are especially helpful for the white-cheeked geese, carefully delineating range and plumages of the various populations of Canada Goose and Cackling Goose--something birders really need, based on the amount of confusion I have witnessed among birders.

The maps are updated, too. The 3-color maps of the 5th Edition (breeding, winter, year-round) have been replaced with 6-colors (adding 3 different colors for migration: spring, fall, both). Hurray!

The new edition also adds more voice annotations. For instance, previous versions of the guide did not list the distinctive calls of swallows and some shorebirds (Red Knot, Surfbird, Rock Sandpiper)--it does now.

Finally! We now have a field guide that shows North American seabirds correctly and completely! It is updated with rarities and subspecies that may actually be separate species. The illustrations of wing molt in Wilson's Storm-Petrel was a nice surprise.

A new feature is a quick-find index on the front cover, and a visual index to bird families on both front and back covers. These will help newer birders find birds and learn the taxonomic sequence.

All the way around, this is a great field guide. In fact, compared to previous editions (especially the 4rd Edition or earlier), this seems like a brand new field guide to hit the market!



Related: A review of the new Stokes guide.

I have another favorite bird guide... and even I don't believe it!

I've never met Donald and Lillian Stokes, but I owe them an apology. Based on their previous books I didn't take them seriously. I viewed them as a quaint mom-and-pop duo, producing beginner bird books in a "Birds and Blooms" vein--pretty pictures with little substance.

In fact (shameful admission), it was an afterthought to purchase their new field guide. I needed to spend $10 more to get free shipping on my other books ordered from Amazon!

Back in December, John Rakestraw had written a review of the new Stokes guide (The Stokes, Redeemed), so I was curious. He said, "there is currently no better photographic guide to all the birds of North America than the new Stokes. This book has taken the Stokes from the periphery of the field guide genre to the forefront." High praise indeed. But not enough to make me go out and buy it. Rakestraw discussed the abundance of photos, but he didn't discuss the real reasons this is such a great guide.



The Stokes Field Guide to the Birds of North America (2010) has real meat. This 800+ page bird guide really teaches the identification of North American birds. It is the only modern guide that starts out with shape as the first field mark, before plumage colors. Well done! That's exactly correct. Then it follows up with tips to the identification of birds in flight. Birds have wings and most fly. Why is this the first field guide to teach us how to identify birds in flight? Donald and Lillian did this?

The Stokeses use to great advantage an ancient invention severely lacking in many recent bird books: ample text. That's right, this book has words describing bird identification. What a concept!

This book includes a "bonus" CD with the songs and calls of 150 common North American birds. But they didn't use the CD as an excuse to skimp on voice descriptions in the text. Both song quality and mnemonic renditions are given.

I have not been a fan of photographic field guides. There is so much variation that a single photo of one individual bird is not as accurate for the species as a whole as an artists' painting. The Stokeses get around this problem by including many photos of each species. They label each photo with sex, age, plumage, location and date photographed, when appropriate. They have addressed the most common "photos versus paintings" arguments in a satisfactory way.

Yes, the 3400 color photos show all the non-downy plumages of over 850 species, but that's not all. This book describes, and often shows with photos, all North American subspecies. That's right, Donald and Lillian do subspecies. Donald and Lillian!

Paul Lehman drew the 4-color maps. So these are very accurate and include migration paths and the "regular extralimital" range.

Who is this book for? While beginners usually appreciate photographic guides, "photo-matching" will not work here--there are just too many plumages shown. Thus, this book is your next step, helping you go forward toward advanced birding--identifying females, juveniles, non-breeders, and well-marked subspecies by shape, voice, plumage, and flight characters.

For a first edition, this book has been edited fairly well, so that I didn't notice any glaring errors. Some reviewers have complained that the coverage of Western birds is not as thorough as those in the East--especially pelagic birds. And, it is true, some of the photos of seabirds are grainy or pixelated--an artifact of magnifying a digital photo too much. The photo of summer Glaucous-winged Gull in California is an obvious hybrid. Since this guide also discusses known hybrids, that photo should have been labeled as such. Manx Shearwaters aren't shown in the Pacific--they occur regularly from Baja to Alaska and are no longer even on the California rare bird list. And the wonderful addition of the ID of birds in flight is uneven. Some describe flight style (wing beats and pattern), others plumage as seen in flight, but few species accounts describe both. There is room for improvement to this novel and welcome addition to North American field guides.

I look forward to future field guides building upon the work pioneered here.

Book Review: Crossley ID Guide

Why review a bird book for Eastern North America in a blog for the Pacific NW?

Two reasons. 1) This book represents a revolutionary paradigm shift in the design and presentation of a bird identification guide. 2) A version covering Western North America is in the works--and you will want one!

I have been hearing about this new guide by Brit birder/photographer Richard Crossley and seeing some sample plates on the web for over a year now. My review copy finally arrived yesterday, but I had read a dozen reviews already. I'm not sure I can add anything that hasn't already been said, but I'll try.

This bird identification guide is different.

It is different from anything you've ever seen before. As such, it may take a little getting used to. And, because it is so different, it is hard to directly compare it with other bird books.

What is it?

The Crossley ID Guide is a photo guide to bird identification half way between a field guide and a coffee table book. Larger than the big Sibley guide, it is heavier too. This is not a field guide.

Sparse on text, Crossley relies on the 640 plates to teach bird identification. He does this by providing 10,000 of his own bird photos in this book! That's over 15 photos per species--twice the number of illustrations per species as Sibley's guide.

But you've never seen bird photos like these before!

Each plate is a collage of bird photos superimposed realistically within an appropriate habitat. As others have said, each plate is like a museum panorama.

The thrushes are on the ground and lower branches in the shadows of a dense woods. The ptarmigans are on a snow-covered mountain slope. The blue jays are on a typical Eastern farm with an orchard. The juncos are in a snowy residential backyard with feeders. The chipping sparrows are on a golf course, complete with 4 golfers playing through. There are warblers dripping from the tree tops. The fish crows are in the marina. A man is feeding the pigeons in a park. The owls are in the dark and barely discernable. The snowy owls are on the beach dunes. The parrots are backdropped against a Miami skyline. The laughing gulls are on the beach at Cape May. The glaucous gulls appear to be at Niagra Falls in the snow, complete with rainbow. The killdeer are following a tractor as it plows a field. The semipalmated plovers are sharing the beach with swimming children. The yellow-headed blackbirds are in a cattle feedlot. The tree sparrows are in dirty snow in a city with spired architecture that I am guessing is Montreal.

No tack-sharp cookie-cutter bird illustraions, here.

The house finch photographed for the introduction covering bird topography has a near-fatal case of avian conjunctivitis--disgusting... and real! Crossley chooses to show birds as he actually sees them--a few near birds in various plumages and ages, then some at medium range, and a virtual "where's Waldo?" collection of distant birds hidden away in their natural habitat.

As in real life, only one of the 7 bushtits is facing the camera. The flying shots of some of the smaller birds are just blurs. There are 7 flying red-breasted nuthatches--the largest has a wingspan on the page of 1 inch, the smallest photo is 1/8 inch long--just as Crossley photographed it, and just as you might see it--flying in the tree tops. He uses to excellent advantage, distant, headless, non-artistic, and sometimes blurry photos such as I have been deleting in my own photography!

Birds are hopping, crawling, fighting, eating, flying, singing, stretching, courting, fleeing, mating, nesting, diving, displaying, preening, drying, swimming. Only a very few are actually sitting there quietly posing for the camera in a Peterson-style side-view. This presentation may be confusing and overhwelming to many at first.

Who is this book for?

Crossley says he designed this book for "beginners, experts, and everyone in between."

I see the appeal this book has for beginners and intermediate birders. The realistic habitats will instantly give one a feel for where each species lives--fence lines next to dredge spoils for palm warbler, deep swamps for Swainson's warbler.

But I do worry that the plates could also mislead. For instance, the text doesn't always tell you that some species are usually solitary. Thus the plate with a dozen merlins may mislead someone into thinking that they are usually found in flocks.

I'm not sure exactly what this book has to offer for experts. Perhaps the tiny photos will show what field marks are visible on a distant flying bird, Certainly, the identificaion of flying birds is not adequately covered in any field guide. But without describing wingbeat angles, frequency, and pattern, and without showing flight progression, this book fails there, too. Maybe the unique presentation alone is enough for more advanced birders to purchase this volume.

"I don't like text."

Well, that certainly is an attention-grabbing way to start a book! In fact, Rick Wright, in his review of this book, argues that this guide would be more approprate as an electronic book.

There are no arrows pointing out field marks. There are no side-by-side comparisons of similar species.

Instead of telling you the "answers" directly, Crossley asks you to pore over the plates and learn from them, thus the reduced amount of text. He likens his guide to a "workbook at school." I'm not sure beginners are willing to put in this amount of work. And there's no "teacher's guide" to this so-called workbook.

The species accounts in the Crossley guide have a small amount of text, but Crossley gives it his own inimitable voice. For instance, under black-crowned night-heron he describes a bit of behavior: "crouches like smaller GRHE [green heron], occasionally walking a few paces hoping for better luck." Under red-headed woodpecker: "Sits quietly for periods of time, always looking around so it knows what's going on."

You might notice the bander's 4-letter alpha code in the description above. These are used throughout. Whether you love or hate referring to birds by their alpha code, it is the purpose of communication--including writing a book--to be understood. This will make it harder for many.

The maps are adequate, 3-color showing breeding, winter, and year-round ranges, but not migration. They often show more of the range than just the East, but are inconsistent in this regard.

In short, this book will not replace any of your field guides. It is, however, a splendid addition to your birding library... or coffee table.

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The offical site is here: http://www.crossleybooks.com/. The first thing you'll notice is Richard Crossley on his head at the beach "turning birding upside down." Well, I doubt he'll turn birding upside down, but already he has turned bird books upside down!

Be sure to look at samples of the plates on the web site above and watch the YouTube link of the "Wild in the City" TV program concept--you might just find that the boisterous, busy, confusing, exciting, overwhelming new Crossley ID Guide mirrors the man--and I mean that in a good way, for both the man and the book.

I can't wait for the Western guide. If Clark's nutcracker isn't shown on the rim of Crater Lake....

If you were on a desert island and could only have one bird book...

Does this photo remind you of a particular popular bird book cover? Red-tailed Hawk, Fernhill Wetlands, Forest Grove, Oregon on 22 November 2007 by Greg Gillson.

 

Birders love bird books. And it seems a new one comes out every week, making your library obsolete.

Recently I moved residences and had to pack up most of my library and put it in storage. Yikes! I could only "keep" one small shelf of bird books, and none of my birding magazine series--they all went into storage. What would I keep out and available for day-to-day use?

Here is a partial list of the books I kept available to me. These are general bird watching and reference books. I also kept local status and distribution works and bird-finding guides. And, of course, I kept out most of my seabird reference guides for my ocean bird watching trips.

Here are my "must-have" bird books.

Field Guides

• Field Guide to the Birds of North America, 5th Edition. Jon L. Dunn and Jonathan Alderfer. 2006. National Geographic Society, Washington D.C.
  
  The "National Geo" guide has been my favorite guide since the first edition was published in 1983. I love the 5th Edition. It is quite updated from the 3rd Edition (1999) with redesigned cover and the addition of thumbtabs to help newer birders. There are some new illustrations and map corrections. It has a nice clean layout with larger illustrations than many other guides. It has all species of birds ever recorded in North America up to 2006--967 species total.
  
  
  
  
• National Audubon Society--The Sibley Guide to Birds. David Allen Sibley. 2000. Alfred A. Knopf, New York.
  
  This is the "big Sibley" and so very well done. Averaging 8 illustrations per species this book has most of the plumages you may expect to encounter in the field. The advantage this book has over others includes the arrows and supporting text pointing to and explaining the illustrations. And it is unsurpassed in showing even passerines in flight. But it is showing its age, being quite behind the times in new bird names and family sequences that have occurred in the 10 years since it was written. It doesn't cover the most rare North American birds. And, of course, it is too large to fit in a pocket for field use and becomes damaged laying loose in the vehicle.
  
  
  

There is a smaller "Western" Sibley [The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America. David Allen Sibley. 2003. Alfred A. Knopf. New York.]. I especially like the 5-color maps, far exceeding the 3-color maps of the National Geographic and most other guides. However, even fewer species are covered. Frankly, some of the rare birds to the West are just the ones I need in a field guide, since I am quite familiar with the common ones. So I want a continental bird book, not a regional one. Thus I own the "big Sibley" and not the Western Sibley. (The same can be said for the regional National Geographic guides on the market now.)



There really isn't any competition (yet) with the above field guides. Peterson has an updated guide suitable for beginning/intermediate birders.

No photographic guide is acceptable as a primary field guide, though John Rakestraw thinks the new Stokes guide is quite good. Here is a June 2008 review of photographic field guides by Rob Fergus. And here are some plates for an exciting new photographic field guide "under construction" by Richard Crossley.

Advanced Bird Identification

• The Peterson Field Guide Series--A Field Guide to Advanced Birding: Birding challenges and how to approach them. Kenn Kaufman. 1990. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.
  
  Though a bit dated, with line drawings rather than photos, this is still a good reference for learning how to identify gulls, Empids, sparrows, peep, jaegers, dowitchers, winter loons, etc. It covers only a select group of the more difficult to identify birds.
  
  
  

Bird and birding references

• Birding Essentials: All the tools, techniques, and tips you need to begin and become a better birder. Jonathan Alderfer and Jon L. Dunn. 2007. National Geographic Society, Washington DC.
  
  My old 1969 Peterson field guide had 20 pages in the Introduction entitled "How to Watch Birds." Newer field guides ran out of room to tell the user essential information about bird identification, birding tools, and bird watching fieldcraft. This 224-page book is the "introduction" on "how to watch birds" that has been "left out" of modern field guides since Peterson was supplanted as the most popular field guide in the mid '80's.
  
  
  
  
• The Audubon Society Encyclopedia of North American Birds. John K. Terres. 1980. Alfred A. Knopf, New York.
  
  At nearly a million words this large volume covers each bird in North America, birding term, and historical person you are likely to encounter. Species accounts give scientific name and meaning, description and measurements, feeding habits, nest, eggs, incubation, other names, age, host to cowbirds, hybrids, weights, and range. If you want to know about bird smell, who Smith's Longspur was named for, smoke bathing, or songs and singing, here it is alphabetically. There is a newer 1995 version available.
  
  
  
  
• Ornithology in Laboratory and Field, 4th Edition. Olin Sewell Pettingill, Jr. 1970. Burgess Publishing Co., Minneapolis, Minn.
  
  All birders should own an ornithology manual. Such a book details topics such as feathers, anatomy, distribution, field and laboratory identification, behavior, migration, eggs and young, ornithological field methods, and more. [A more modern textbook is Ornithology, 3rd Edition. Frank B. Gill. 2006. W.H Freeman & Co. New York.]
  
  
  

For many birders, getting a brand new bird book is akin to getting a new car. You may baby it for a while, but before long you've driven it to the top of the forest service lookout and through some "roads" that were barely rabbit trails and your new books look like these.

Thus, I recommend buying used from online book sellers such as Amazon.com. I visited a Powell's book store a couple of month's ago and came away with 5 "previously viewed" bird books in great condition, all for under $80.

My shelf runneth over....