Quick Picks - Category Archive

As mentioned in a recent post, I’ve been looking forward to finally seeing this book. So I was excited when it showed up on the doorstep yesterday. I’m planning on doing a full review eventually, but in the meantime I wanted to share some initial thoughts.

• My very first thought was amazement at how large and heavy the box from Amazon was.
• I was pleasantly surprised at the packing. I’m extremely anal about the condition of my books, and sometimes they can get dinged up in the mail. I was hoping that it would be shrink-wrapped, but the publisher did one better. Princeton is shipping these out in their own secure cardboard box, as befits a book of this quality (and price).
• This book is huge! Here are a couple of comparison shots…

And now on to the contents.

Art

Some of the sample artwork from this book had me concerned. While this monograph’s main purpose is to be a knowledge reference to this family, for many, the artwork is the main draw (pun not intended, at least until I caught it!). The art doesn’t absolutely blow me away, but I do like it. There are a few images that I don’t particularly care for, but there are also some really good ones.

Text

I haven’t had time to read much of it. And even when I do, I’m not an expert on this group of birds. But I will at least compare the family overview and species accounts with those from the Handbook of the Birds of the World.

This is a gorgeous, well-produced book. The only thing even slightly unattractive about it is the copious amount of white space. I know it’s not a simple either/or, but I would rather this large book with large art and a lot of white space than a smaller book with smaller art and less space.

At over $100, I can’t say that this book, no matter how nice, would be worth it for everyone. But I can say that it was for me.

As you can see, the new Peterson guide (in the middle) is significantly larger than the last edition of the eastern regional guide. It even approaches the “large Sibley” in size. Naturally, since this new book covers all the species in North America, you would expect it to be thicker. But the trim size has also been increased. Thankfully, for the most part the publisher has used this extra room to reproduce the art in a larger size and expand the text accounts instead of cramming in more species on each plate.

Most of Peterson’s paintings have been ported over with no changes. However, some digital enhancements have been done to many of the illustrations. If you click on this comparison picture of the flycatcher plates you should be able to see some subtle differences (the new book is on bottom). Each of these empids have been modified at least slightly, although my photography probably won’t allow you to see some of it. But you can easily see, for example, that the Yellow-bellied is now more greenish above and the primary projection of the Least is shorter.

These changes have been used to add or modify field marks, change the shape, or make other subtle modifications according to the current knowledge of identification. All of the ones that I noticed on species that I’m familiar with have improved the image.

However, there are some more extensive changes as well, as evidenced by this plate of spotted thrushes. If you look closely at the thrushes shown on both plates – Veery, Gray-cheeked, Swainson’s, and Hermit – you will see that they have not only been modified, they are completely new paintings Update: actually, it is not new. See below…. In this case there are some differences, such as the amount and darkness of the breast spots, that could have been accomplished with enhancements instead of a completely new image. Thus, presumably there was another reason for the replacement. For this plate, I think it was the addition of the new bird, Bicknell’s Thrush, and the inclusion of the western forms of Swainson’s and Hermit. I am assuming that in order to include these new images it necessitated a compete redo.

There are a few cases of replacement where the reasoning is not evident to me. But most appear to be a case of plate layout, as with these thrushes, or where the changes needed were so extensive that it made more sense to start from scratch. However, it is obvious that great care has been taken to make sure that these changes and replacements do not stand out. Where possible, the birds in the new paintings have been placed in the exact same pose as in Peterson’s original. Many times I had to carefully examine the images to tell whether they had been enhanced or completely replaced. Unless you are extremely familiar with Peterson’s work, or compare the plates side-by-side, you will probably not notice the changes.

There are also some changes on the facing pages, such as the increased size for the map thumbnails. As in the previous regional guides, there is a section in the back that gathers together all of the maps in a much larger format, with annotations.

Update: I finally got a chance to do some comparisons with the Western guide. It turns out that many of the paintings I thought had been redone were actually taken from the Western edition instead of the more recent Eastern. That includes these thrushes (except the Bicknell’s is still new). I had figured that the plates in the Eastern, being worked on much more recently, were more up-to-date. But there are probably more considerations that I’m not aware of.
No wonder all of those “new” paintings fit in so well!

For more information on this guide, see its featured page – The New Peterson Guide.

This afternoon I found the new Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America waiting for me on the porch. I haven’t had time to go through it extensively, much less write a review, but I thought some of you may appreciate a quick look at it.

Here are some looks at the guide. I apologize for the quality of the pictures. They are aweful. No, they are worse than aweful. But regardless, they will give you an idea of the layout.

A unique feature of this guide is that it includes a DVD with “587 downloadable bird songs” (but only 138 species, total). It also comes with a nice booklet listing all the tracks. Here are all the species included. Again, I apologize for the format, but it was the best I could do on short notice. I’ll try to work up something better for the full review.

I haven’t had long enough with it to feel comfortable making a recommendation. That will have to wait for my full review. As a comparison, it seems most similar to the recent National Wildlife Federation guide. But in the meantime, if you normally buy every field guide that comes out (I can’t be the only one!), I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t add this one to your library as well.

A full review of the Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America is now available.

If Pete Dunne wrote a restaurant menu, I would read it word for word. He is easily my favorite birding author. Here is a list of all the books that he has written, along with magazines that for which he is a regular contributor.

I have read most of these books, and they are without exception highly recommended. For birders, the most important is arguably the Field Guide Companion. It is so helpful with identification that every North American birder should have a copy. I would say that Pete Dunne on Bird Watching is next on the must-read list, as it is probably the best introduction to birding that I have seen. And if you just want to sit back and enjoy a great read? You can’t go wrong with The Feather Quest, which is one of the best birding travel books. Honestly, you can’t go wrong with any of them!

Birding/Identification

• Pete Dunne’s Essential Field Guide Companion: A Comprehensive Resource for Identifying North American Birds (Full Review)
• Pete Dunne on Bird Watching: The How-to, Where-to, and When-to of Birding
• The Art of Pishing: How to Attract Birds by Mimicking Their Calls (Book & Audio CD)
• Hawks in Flight: The Flight Identification of North American Migrant Raptors

Other

• The Feather Quest: A North American Birder’s Year
• The Wind Masters: The Lives of North American Birds of Prey (Full Review)
• Prairie Spring: A Journey Into the Heart of a Season (Full Review)

Essays

• Tales of a Low-Rent Birder
• More Tales of a Low-Rent Birder (Full Review)
• Golden Wings, and Other Stories About Birders and Birding
• Small-headed Flycatcher. Seen Yesterday. He Didn’t Leave His Name.: and other stories
• Before the Echo: Essays on Nature (Corrie Herring Hooks Series)

Other books Dunne has contributed to

• New Jersey: The Natural State – wrote the forward
• Good Birders Don’t Wear White: 50 Tips From North America’s Top Birders (Full Review) – wrote the forward (complete text), and contributed one of the tips

Magazines

• Living Bird (Full Review) – Dunne writes a one-page column, “The Catbird Seat”, for every issue (published quarterly)
• Birder’s World – Dunne contributes a column for every issue, usually focused on his travels (published bi-monthly)
• Wildbird – Dunne contributes a column for every bi-monthly issue
• Tigrina Times – this online magazine from the Cape May Bird Observatory has a regular column by Dunne. Be sure to check out the archives for more Dunne goodness (and after that all the other features on identification, book reviews, etc) (published weekly)

In addition to these, Dunne has been published in probably every birding magazine known to man (well, at least in the US).

There has to be more that I’m either forgetting or don’t know about. If anyone is aware of more, especially anything that can be accessed online, I’d love to hear about it!