Review: The New Birder's Guide to Birds of North America

There are a lot of field guides out there.  Including guides aimed at beginners.  Each guide claims its own unique features.  Some are great, some are OK, and some are frustrating.

Bill Thompson III's The New Birder's Guide to Birds of North America may not make this claim for itself, but it may be one of the most fun field guides to come out recently.  It is a publisher's and reader's delight, with a tight and beautiful layout that makes it very fun to peruse.

In short, this is the book form of Bill Thompson III leading beginning birders on an extended cross country trip to see "300 of the most common birds in the United States and Canada."  In doing so, he shares what to look for, listen for, and remember about each bird.  He also shares a nugget of trivia about each bird--just as if we were on a birdwalk together.

In addition to one or two photos of each species, each one page species account features a black and white illustration (by Julie Zickefoose or Michael DiGiorgio) of the bird in action.  A full color range map, and notes on how to find each bird are also included.

Great layout, fun illustrations and facts.  Unfortunately in this case the photos don't show what they say they do, or help very much if you live in the West.

This well-chunked and informative layout makes this book fun and easy to use.  Thompson's prose is light and engaging.  I especially enjoy his descriptions of bird vocalizations--something that isn't easy to do, making it the hardest section to read in most field guides.  Not so here--as when we are told that the Common Moorhen "sounds like someone is torturing a frog" and the Cactus Wren "sounds like someone trying to start a car."

As befitting any guide for beginners, there are plenty of other extra features here to get one started on the road to enjoying birds, including instructions on birding gear, how to use binoculars, info on birding manners, and helpful lists including Five Outside the Box Tips for Improving Your Birding Skills and Be Green: Ten Things You Can Do for Birds.

It's also very cool that Bill Thompson wrote this book in collaboration with his kids and their schoolmates.

So what's not to like about this guide?  It's a delight to read.  A lot of fun.  Beginning birders, and even more seasoned types, will find fun and memorable facts to increase their enjoyment of birds.  But since it has only 300 species featured, it obviously isn't going to help identify every bird--including "red-shafted" Northern Flickers, immature gulls, and the domestic waterfowl that they are most likely to see at their neighborhood park.  There isn't a good way around that limitation.  Readers are even promised in the introduction that they will see birds not found in this book--and that they should have a more comprehensive field guide to help them with those identifications--useful advice for sure, but also begging the question of why such a limited guide might be needed at all.

But since there aren't easy answers to that question--it's best to just enjoy this well written and put together guide for what it is--a fun introduction to North American birds and birding, with text and illustrations almost as lively as the birds themselves.  During this holiday season it would make a good stocking stuffer for the beginning or causal birder, or if you've been birding with Bill Thompson III out on the birding festival circuit, this encapsulation of his birding spirit is a must have as well!

Disclaimer: review based on a library copy.

Additional Reviews:
Birder's Library
Amazon

Review: Field Guide to the Birds of New Jersey

I've only lived in New Jersey for three years, but New Jersey is a great place to bird, with so many birds in such an easily traversed state.  Every where I go, people stop me and seem to want to talk about the birds they see.  Most of these folks probably don't consider themselves birders--though many know quite a bit about the local birds.

These may well be the perfect audience for Rick Wright's new Field Guide to the Birds of New Jersey--the first in what appears to be a long line of state guides to be sponsored by the American Birding Association.  The Field Guide to the Birds of New Jersey (henceforth FGBNJ) is an attractive and well produced book that aspires to spark "a lifetime of enjoyment of birds" in NJ.  I hope it succeeds.

As is obvious from the title, this guide is focused on a small geographic area--just one U.S. state.  Since it is aimed at new or beginning birders, it does not cover every bird found in the Garden State, but does a good job of representing the most common 255 birds that folks are bound to find--including some tough to find birds such as Connecticut Warbler and Northern Saw-Whet Owl that will take some diligent searching to actually observe.

FGBNJ is a photo guide.  I'm not a huge fan of photo guides--usually preferring the synthetic abstraction of an artists rendering to the misplaced concreteness of a photo--but for its purpose, this one does a good job.  The photos--over 600 in all--are almost universally excellent.  Their large format provides good looks at the birds covered.  The photos are beautiful.

With beautiful photos, FGBNJ does a good job of staying out of their way.  The layout is simple, with one species to a page or even a two page spread.  The text for each bird is one big paragraph, written to be actually read rather than skimmed.  Identification tips are usually kept to captions inset into the photos.

My favorite part of bird guides is to hear the voice of the author.  In this case, my friend Rick Wright's polished writing is a joy.  His summary of each species is a good introduction to the bird, and will be very educational for those learning about each species for the first time.  As a clever writer, Rick has tucked away little Easter eggs here and there that will delight.  I've never read about a bank collapse in a field guide before!  And the imagery is often a joy to read, such as an "ocean sprinkled with the silvery dots of roosting and feeding loons."  Such spare but delightful prose hearkens back to the species accounts written by Roger Tory Peterson, the grandfather of all field guide authors.  Wright's prose is a fitting and worthy perpetuator of that grand tradition.

In addition to the species accounts, FGBNJ provides a full checklist to the birds of New Jersey, tips on good birding locations around the state, and the obligatory sections on the parts of a bird and how to identify birds--all geared to the beginner in a clear and concise manner that minimizes jargon--you will find napes, primaries, and secondaries, but as far as I can tell, no tertials.  Perfect for beginners.

There are many challenges to writing and producing a guide for beginners, but FGBNJ and presumably the rest of the American Birding Association series of state guides do provide a good introduction to the birds of the state, and hopefully will provide inspiration to those with casual birding interests to join the ranks of those who start wandering farther and farther afield in their search for avian treasures!

Disclaimer: this review based on a library copy.

Rare Birds of North America

When I was in high school, one of my favorite books was Don Roberson's Rare Birds of the West Coast.  The only copy available to me was in the Portland Public Library, and I would have to ride the bus downtown to check it out on a special out of county loan.  I would then spend hours looking at all the vagrants recorded in Oregon and nearby states, and dream about what it might be possible to find.  When I got kicked out of my Junior year English class for being obnoxious and had to come up with a self-study unit to pass the time, Rare Birds of the West Coast was my principle source in compiling a paper on which birds were most likely to be added to the official Oregon state list.  Roberson's book, though very dated now, is still one of my favorite bird books of all time.

When I heard that Steve Howell, Ian Lexington, and Will Russell were coming out with Rare Birds of North America (Princeton, 2014), I was very excited to get my hands on the definitive guide to rare birds of the whole continent!

The book has been out for months now, and there have been many excellent reviews (including BirdGuides, Birder's Library, Birdwatch, and ABA).  These reviews are all pretty much glowing, and I recommend going there for more details that I may skip here.  Most reviews come out when a book is released.  Now that I've lived with and used this book for a few months, perhaps I can offer a different perspective.

Rare Birds of North America has a lot going for it.  Let's start with the illustrations.  For me, the gouache paintings by Ian Lewington are the best thing about this book--and blow the socks off the color plates in Rare Birds of the West Coast and they pretty much trump any current field guide illustrations found in North American guides. The illustrations--from the accentor on the cover, to the very last of the 275 color plates--are stunning.  They are clear, large, and a joy to behold.  They've got my mouth watering for the future publication of a field guide to North American birds that will feature Lewington's work.  These illustrations have made this book my second stop (after my trusty Sibley) when considering the identity of a possible vagrant bird.  I even carried it around in my car for awhile.  I expect I'll be using and enjoying these illustrations for a long time.

Sample plate from Rare Birds of North America

The text of Rare Birds of North America is exhaustively researched and documented and the format and layout is fantastic, with great introductory sections on vagrancy as well as molt and topography of bird plumage (but what else would you expect from the author of Peterson Reference Guide to Molt in North American Birds?).  The species accounts are also well thought out, with information on occurrence, possible patterns of vagrancy, and identification and habits of each species covered.    In summary here's what works best for me:

• Discussion of vagrancy--good review of literature and speculations
• Molt and topography section--concise review
• Species accounts organization and layout, especially the--
• Comments section--where we get the clearest access to the authors's thoughts on these birds and their occurrence, including fun speculations about how, why, and where these birds might possibly turn up next.

In living with the text of this book, there's a few things that have been a little irritating for me:

• Division of the species accounts based on geographic origin of vagrants.  For each taxonomic group of birds, birds of New World and Old World origin are split from each other, sometimes them harder to find in the text.
• Field Identification section--generally good information, but sometimes vague and frustrating.  Many times I'm left wondering what field marks are really diagnostic, or if I would be able to really identify one of these vagrants based on the information provided.  A case in point from an actual frustrating ID I faced here is Yellow-legged Gull.  This is a real possible vagrant where I live (and I had a candidate bird last year), but one that might be impossible to distinguish from a hybrid Herring x Lesser Black-backed Gull.  The text mentions this challenge without really providing a good discussion of how to actually make the distinction.  Granted this may be a frontier of bird identification, but I was hoping for some more clarity here from the founder of the Bird ID Frontiers listserv!  Likewise, when a possible New Jersey first European Golden Plover showed up in a sod farm field a few miles from my house, the ID text offered some hints (underwing pattern and body structure), but left me hanging in describing the plumage.  In fact there aren't detailed plumage descriptions here--just comparisons between the vagrant birds and more familiar North American species, or between the ages and sexes of the vagrant species.  So where I would hope a book like this would provide the definitive descriptions and field identification discussions, after using this book a few times I feel like it is a good reference, but not the final word, and that more research in other references will often be needed to actually identify a vagrant.
• Summaries of vagrant records are generally good, but when I found that the 1996 Common Crane record from Nebraska that I and many other North American listers twitched (this was the first twitchable Common Crane in 20 years) was not included, it made me wonder how exhaustive these summaries actually are.  I suspect they are pretty thorough, but you hate for there to be a doubt.

That said, and my petty quibbles aside, Rare Birds of North America is an impressive book.  While I may not actually work as the best source of ID info on some of these birds, it will still be helpful, the illustrations will be very useful, and the summary of bird records will still inspire the imagination.  If it helps birders find and recognize more of these mega vagrants, than it will have fulfilled its purpose and provided a lot of enjoyment to twitchers across North America.  I personally look forward to spending additional time with this book, and using it to help me when I'm birding on my own or twitching somebody else's good find.

As I mentioned, most bird books arrive with much aplomb and online reviews, then you don't hear much about them later.  I'd be curious to hear how Rare Birds of North America has lived up to its initial reviews, or what other thoughts folks have about it after living with it for half a year?

(Review based on a review copy provided by Princeton University Press).

Top 10 best birds of 2013

I didn't do a lot of traveling this past year, so most of my birding was close to home.  Here are my top 10 birds of 2013:

1) Mew Gull--back in January I was able to find this bird, the first one ever photographed in New Jersey.

First documented Mew Gull in NJ, photo Rob Fergus

2) Lazuli Bunting--six days after finding the first Mew Gull in New Jersey, I found this bird, the first Lazuli Bunting ever found in New Jersey.  I didn't get the best look and we weren't able to fully identify it until others were able to get photos a week later.  Thank goodness birding is a team sport :-)

First documented Lazuli Bunting in NJ, photo Sam Galick.

3) Blue-footed Booby--on one of only a couple out of state trips this year I was able to see two of these birds at Skinner Lake in Riverside County, California earlier this month.  Looks like it will be my only new bird for my ABA area list this year.

Blue-footed Boobies with cormorants, Skinner Lake, CA--photo Rob Fergus

4) Snowy Owl--there are hundreds of these guys across the East Coast this winter, and a couple weeks ago I got a call about one near my home.  A couple hours later it was relocated and I got to see it, the first one documented for our county (or so we thought until a photo of one a week earlier ended up in the local paper!).

2nd Hunterdon County NJ Snowy Owl record--photo Rob Fergus

5) Barnacle Goose--this bird from last January was one of 10 species I was able to add to my county list last year, and maybe a third county record.  Just got word this morning that it was seed again today, so hope to see it again in 2014.

6) Long-eared Owl--another scarce local bird I was able to add to my county list this year.

7) Pink-footed Goose--got this rare Eurasian bird for the first time in the county late in 2012, and at least three different birds showed up off and on in the county for the first part of 2013.  So far no reports from this winter, but we'll be looking.

Pink-footed Goose, Hunterdon Co, NJ--photo Rob Fergus

8) Glossy Ibis--saw my first one for the county back in May, a bird seen flying across the Spruce Run reservoir at the end of a very good day of birding there with friends.

9) Northern Lapwing--three birds in South Jersey were the first ones I've seen in North America since 1995.

10) Short-eared Owl--my first one for the county was pretty sweet to see, and took a lot of attempts at dusk and dawn to finally see.

I only saw 252 species this past year, my worst year probably in a long time.  That is fewer species than I saw in the county alone last year, and really not great. 1 new ABA bird is the fewest new ABA species I've added in a long time as well.  New responsibilities at church and a new job kind of slowed me down.  My blogging here has tapered off a lot too.  But even with all that, these are some very fine birds to have part of my life this past year, and I am grateful for them!

So what about birding goals for 2014?  I want to get 100 species for my yard next year.  Also want to help two of my kids get 200 species for the county in 2014.  So look forward to lots of birding with them in the coming year.  I'm close to an ABA birding milestone of 700 species, so I'm still playing with the possibility of a south Florida trip in the spring to (finally!) put me over that milestone.

Review--Birders: The Central Park Effect

I just spent a very enjoyable hour watching Birders: The Central Park Effect.  This documentary film features a year in the life of the park, birds and the birders that watch them.  This is another great film to show your non-birding friends.  I had a big smile on my face as I saw over 100 bird friends, as well as birders in their natural habitat!  The film really does capture the beauty of birds, as well as the spirit of birding.  

If you are a Central Park birder, you will see people that you know.  This film spends a good deal of time walking around with Starr Saphir--a legendary Central Park birder who was in the advanced stages of breast cancer while this film was shot, and who actually passed away this week at the age of 73.  The film is a great tribute to her as well as the other NYC birders who make Central Park their home.

I look forward to seeing the extra features in the DVD, including extended interviews with Jonathan Franzen and others, as this review was based on a preview copy (without extra features) sent to me by Music Box Films.  So get the DVD and enjoy an hour celebrating the joy of birds and birding in an iconic setting.

Best Bird Book Picks for the Holidays

Jon Young, What the Robin Knows: How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Julie Zickefoose, The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds with Common Birds, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

John Muir Laws, The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds, Heyday.

2012 has been a great year for bird book publishing, with many worthy books to enjoy, but the three books covered here stand out to me as groundbreaking in that they have the power to fundamentally change how you see and enjoy birds.

What the Robin Knows--I've already mentioned this book before, and the more time I've spent with it, the more I like it.  But even better, the more it has changed the way I go birding.  While I haven't yet designated a sit spot and committed myself to sitting and fully exploring the world of my backyard birds, I have slowed down and spent more time sitting and watching.  I've also found myself pausing while birding and listening more to take in what is going on around me.  I've also become more aware of how my actions are influencing the birds I am trying to find and enjoy.  Just yesterday I was walking and found myself caught up in my own thoughts and not finding anything.  I stopped, refocused, and within a minute had clued in on a flock of juncos and several other birds nearby.  I changed my gait and my pace, and enjoyed more birds in a few minutes than I had in the previous hour.

What the Robin Knows provides a great introduction to what tracker, nature educator, and author Jon Young calls bird language--the way birds communicate and respond to their environment.  By better understanding what the birds are doing, and what they are responding to, birders and nature enthusiasts can a) find more birds, b) see more secretive wildlife, and c) become more in tune with their local landscape and environment.  I enjoyed Young's anecdotes of experiences with bird language from New Jersey (where he grew up and I now live) and the Pacific Northwest (where I grew up and Young now lives), but the lessons his experiences teach are useful wherever you may live.

The book, and accompanying web-based sound files, instruct the reader and listener how to hear and interpret various vocal cues including alarm calls from common birds.  Also very attractive and instructive are a series of illustrations showing typical bird responses to intrusions or interruptions in their environment.  My favorite is the Bird Plow--the widespread fleeing of birds before the arrival of oblivious hikers or walkers.  Since reading this book, I've seen this in effect a lot in public places.  I've also seen most of the other 11 major bird responses illustrated and described in the book.  As I've learned to pay attention to these birds, and as I try to walk in a way so as to avoid provoking the most severe responses, I've found myself enjoying nature more and seeing more birds and other wildlife.  Several times in the past month, I've found myself freezing, looking up, and looking right into the eyes of a red or gray fox that I otherwise hadn't noticed.  Very cool.

The Bird Plow--birds fleeing from an oblivious walker

I recommend What the Robin Knows for everyone who enjoys birds, or wants to better connect with their wild side.  Birders will find a greater appreciation for their quarry as well as a tips on improving their field skills--especially birders like me who sometimes need to slow down and pay more attention to the birds around me.  Backyard birders and the general public will also have their eyes open to a whole new world of birds and how they respond to us and our shared environment.

The Bluebird Effect--When I was working on my dissertation on urban bird conservation, I was enchanted by an NPR piece that Julie Zickefoose produced about her experience with baby hummingbirds.  I was fascinated by the insights that bird rehabilitators gain from their close interactions with birds.  While my chapter on bird rehabilitators never made the final draft of my dissertation, I've continued to be fascinated by the stories I hear from bird rehabilitators.

In The Bluebird Effect, Zickefoose gives us her best work yet--including amazing stories of birds she has known and usually helped as a rehabilitator.  By getting as close as she does, she is able to often come to know birds as individuals.  I've always been a sucker for this kind of intimate bird knowledge, and Zickefoose clearly delivers!  Her stories are not only charming, but when you step back and realize how carefully she has observed--and recorded--her observations, it is an inspiration for us all to more carefully observe and record what we are seeing.

Baby American Robin sketches and notes by Julie Zickefoose.

In addition to stories, The Bluebird Effect is lusciously illustrated with her sketches and paintings of the birds she knows.  I think the sketches here are her most beautiful and enjoyable art yet.  They capture the moments and personality of the birds better than many more "finished" bird portraits.  I've spent a lot of time just flipping through the book enjoying these sketches and smaller paintings.  They make me wish I'd spent more time over the years working on my own artistic skills.

The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds--As if to answer that desire, John Muir Laws has put out perhaps the most visually stunning bird book of the year, an insanely beautiful and useful guide to not only drawing and painting--but seeing birds.  If you've ever wanted to be a bird artist, or to just better see and know the birds around you (like Julie Zickefoose), this is the guide for you.  Even if you don't want to draw birds, you won't be able to put this book down because it is just so amazing.  Muir walks you through not only how to erdraw birds, but how to see them and understand why they look the way they do.


Perhaps my favorite illustration in the book is a "cutaway" view of a Hermit Thrush, showing the tiny naked bird body inside the fluffy feather coat (below).

John Muir Laws cutaway view of a Hermit Thrush.  See more of this at his website.

You've got to see this book to fully appreciate it.  There are quite a few pages viewable on Amazon.  Take a look and enjoy!  Then get the book!  You can also see a lot of Laws' work and get some drawing lessons at his website.  

My wife suggested I give this book to our kids for Christmas.  Heck no!  Maybe they can borrow it from me, but I'm keeping it for myself!

New Year's resolution for 2013--spend more time sitting and watching bird language, take better notes of bird behavior, and draw more birds.  These three books will be my guide.  Perhaps you'd enjoy taking these books for a ride as well!

Disclaimer
Review of What the Robin Knows and the Laws Guide to Drawing Birds based on review copies provided by the publishers.  The Bluebird Effect reviewed from a library copy, hopefully Santa will bring me a copy for myself!

Review: Bird Sense

I have to admit, I was a bit alarmed when I first saw the announcement for Bird Sense: What It's Like to Be  a Bird, since I've been using that subtitle for public presentations on bird vision since 2001.  Have I waited to long to write my own book on this topic?  Was I totally scooped?

I'm happy to say that Bird Sense is not the book that I would (and still may) write on this topic, but it is a good introduction to how birds see, hear, and otherwise sense and the world around them.  The roughly 225 pages of easily read text is organized into seven chapters addressing bird vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell, magnetic sense, and emotions.  Most of the discussion covers the anatomy of these sensory systems, and how they vary between different birds.  This is a good review or introduction, though I found myself wanting more.  For instance, we know a lot more about ultraviolet vision in birds than was covered here, and I found myself wishing for more discussion of that amazing bird sense.

A highlight of the book is the author's own field experiences with birds around the world.  However, the extended discussion of the sex lives of Buffalo Weavers, while interesting, seemed like a tangent in the chapter on touch, but did make me see that bird sex would be a fun topic and hope that Birkhead will expand upon it in a future book.

Tim Birkhead is a scientist, and a careful one at that, which means that he sticks pretty closely to safe topics that are well studied, and there isn't a lot of speculation in this book.  This is good science, but may not ultimately satisfy folks who really want to know what it's like to be a bird--a question that may only be answered by equal parts science and imagination.  Bird Sense sticks closer to the science, and leaves most of the imagination up to the reader.

So there is still much more to explore and discuss about how birds see, hear, and otherwise experience the world.  That said, Bird Sense is a very well written, entertaining, and informative introduction to the topic, and a good place to start for anyone interested in birds and how they experience their world.