The Era of Ten Pound Field Guides

For someone who doesn't have the time to enjoy birding, I have more field guides than almost anyone I know. I still rely on my 50 year old 2nd edition Peterson's Guide, and I'm likely to carry my favorite Kenn Kaufman's Field Guide to the Birds of North America or one of a number of smaller guides to New England birds into the field on those rare occasions when I go birding.

So what to make of the arrival of the new Stokes Field Guide to the Birds last October? One reviewer states that while it is large and heavy, he could carry it in the pocket of his cargo pants. He must be a belt and suspender kind of guy because I'd consider hiring a book bearer to carry it into the field with me.

Still, it's a wonderful book. Each of the 854 species (about 700 more than you're likely to see in Easton) covered has at least two photographs and many common birds have 6-10 spectacular color shots. The book also includes a CD with sounds from 150 common birds. For you non-bird watchers out there, Roger Tory Peterson revolutionized birding early in the 20th century with a system of bird identification based on certain features of a bird. See a spot on the chest of a sparrow and you probably had a song sparrow. The Stokes Guide introduces to average birders something good birders have been using for a while now. The Stokes call it "quantitative shape identification" and it's based on looking at the whole bird and checking out the proportions of the key parts and how they relate to each other. It's a good system and better than trying to see a streak over the eye of a bird off in a tree.

Even better may be the new Crossley ID Guide to Eastern Birds. Richard Crossley basically believes the best way to identify birds is to look at a lot of them. His guide is designed to be too big to carry into the field, but just open it to any page, and you can experience the thrill of birding from your favorite arm chair.

It's a "Where's Waldo?" guide to birds. The idea is to put the bird into its environment just as you might see it. There are at least nine examples of this little bird, a Black and White Warbler, in the picture. This bird is a summer resident here, and I bet most of you have never seen it. This guide should help, and it's great fun on a rainy day.

Just time for a brief word on Pete Dunne's Essential Field Guide Companion, another heavyweight. This one has no pictures relying instead on excellent descriptions of a bird and its activities to supplement what you see in a field guide. Sounds like a strange way to id birds, but the description of a Wilson's Warbler helped me nail down an observation I made more than five years ago.