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Birdwatching
with Phyllis Yochem
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Tuesday, December 12, 2000
New field guides pack in facts and drawings for new and seasoned birders
Many of you were not around ... not yet born ... when I began birding. What got me started was a gift of a new field guide (we called it a "bird book'') from my father. It was a fascinating work, full of pictures of birds most of which I had never seen.
That field guide was Roger Tory Peterson's "Guide to the Birds of Texas." Peterson was already famous for having changed the science of birding. He had devised an original way of identifying birds without shooting or trapping them. His first book had been about the birds of the East Coast, and was called simply "A Field Guide to the Birds." Then a guide had to be written about the birds of the western part of this country.
Peterson was birder friendly, so he tried to make his new Texas guidebook not only helpful to beginners but useful to the advanced student. "The enjoyment of birds,'' he said, "depends neither upon intensive study nor upon academic qualifications." He took pride in helping birders to begin to learn about birds without frightening them away, and was gratified to find one of his guides "marked on every page'' because then he knew it had been well used.
Field guides reviewed
This has been a banner year for field guides. Two new ones have been published. They are Kenn Kaufman's "Focus Guide to the Birds of North America,'' and "The Sibley Guide to Birds,'' by David Sibley. Vicki Simon carries them in her store, Nature's Bird Center.
The books are very different. The Kaufman guide is compact, portable, and accessible. It utilizes the new techniques of digital editing to enhance its carefully composed photos.
While it's not so portable (weighing in at more than 2 pounds), the Sibley guide is loaded with useful information and the pictures are outstanding. It uses multi drawings of every bird, showing differences in age, where the birds live, and views from above and below.
In a review in The Wall Street Journal, Marie Winn (author of Red-tails in Love), makes what seems to me a good reason for needing both guides. "Like cookbook collectors, who find something new and useful in each, birdwatchers buy many field guides, to enlarge their knowledge, to help them in the field, and somehow just for the opportunity to quibble with other enthusiasts over details an author got wrong.''
If you feel you can afford only one book, Kaufman's is more useful to beginning birders. But Sibley's guide, even if you have to put it on hold, belongs in every serious birder's library.
Phyllis Yochem, a Corpus Christi
resident, has studied birds of Texas since 1960.
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