Birding in the American West: A Handbook

I don’t remember why I originally ordered this book, but it was probably to help prepare for my first birding trip “out west” to southeast Arizona. But I do distinctly remember being pleasantly surprised once I started reading it. I was not expecting it to be essentially three books in one. It combines general birding techniques, help with difficult identification, and a birdfinding guide. Think of it as an amalgamation of Pete Dunne on Bird Watching, Kenn Kaufman’s Advanced Birding, and an ABA/Lane guide to the entire region.

Geographically, the western half of the country is covered stopping at the eastern borders of the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Alaska is also included, but Hawaii is not. If you live in an area that is not covered here, please do not stop reading. This book is recommended to all birders in the United States and Canada, even if you will never step foot in the west.

Birding in General

The first three chapters deal with general birding techniques and tips. These are applicable to all birders, regardless of location and skill level. In fact, I think just about anyone could learn a great deal from these chapters.

The first chapter covers finding birds. This includes discussions on habitat, plants, seasons, time of day, tape playback, pishing, finding pelagic birds, and ethics. Next up are techniques for identification. Feather topography, molt, jizz, vocalizations, and behavior are all covered in detail. A unique and very helpful inclusion here is a “Ready Reference to Key Characters”. It is a list of bird groups and the key characteristics to focus on. Here are a few examples:

Shearwaters. Identifications range from straightforward to difficult. Look primarily at head and rump patterns and colors, underwing patterns, flight characteristics, and leg and bill color.

Swallows. Identification is straightforward. Note back, rump, and underpart colors; tail shape; and presence or absence of a breast band.

Chapter three teaches how to keep field notes. It tells what you should record and gives some suggestions as to how. A couple of sample pages are shown. No mention is made of listing software, which can help make record keeping much easier. But I suppose the book was published before the software became widely used.

Advanced Identification

Up next is the largest section of the book and the one that probably gets the most use – difficult identifications. Here specific identification problems are addressed. A few examples are “Elegant versus Royal versus Caspian Tern”, “Empidonax Flycatchers”, and “Basic-Plumaged Longspurs”. These are very similar in format to those in Kaufman’s Advanced Birding. The text is detailed, extensive, and very helpful. Black-and-white photographs and line drawings accompany the text to illustrate the main field marks of some, but not all, species. Of course color photography would be preferable, but for the most part these black-and-white pictures are adequate for their purpose. The line drawings are even more helpful since they can focus on and directly compare specific parts of confusing species, such as the wings of nighthawks and the heads of sparrows.

The species and groups covered were arbitrarily chosen by the author based on his previous experience. Some groups, such as Pterodroma petrels, could not be covered at all because there was not room for the necessarily detailed treatment they required. Additionally, the author notes that some groups, such as gulls, are given only minimal treatment for the same reason. That may be, but there are still thirteen pages devoted to gulls in general, and more than ten total for Slaty-backed and Thayer’s Gulls.

Although the species and groups covered are western birds some of them are also found in the east, and many more turn up as vagrants. For instance, all of the jaegers and empidonax flycatchers in North America are covered in great detail. Any birder on the continent could use help with these groups, and the many others that are covered in this section.

Bird Finding

The final segment of the book is devoted to finding the western specialties. The species listed here are those the author considers to be essentially western birds. Most common and/or widespread species are not treated. Additionally, irruptive species and most Asian vagrants are not included.

The species accounts here are very similar in nature to those in birdfinding guides such as the ABA/Lane series. They tell where, when, and in what habitat the bird can be found. For some common and widespread species the habitat information alone should be sufficient, so specific places to look are not listed. But for rarer and local birds more specific locations are given. However, these are never as detailed as regional birdfinding guides. For example, it might list several states and the best sites within those states for finding the species. But details such as mileage are left to other guides. Therefore, this will not take the place of birdfinding guides, but then again it was never intended to. But if you need help figuring out the best place to go to see a specific species, then this is the resource for you.

Recommendation

When a book, or anything else for that matter, tries to do too many things at once it usually does them all poorly. This handbook is the exception. It tackles three distinct subjects and it is worth reading for any of them. It is very highly recommended to anyone, resident or visitor, birding the United States or Canada.

 

One additional note, this handbook is essentially a second edition of the author’s previous work, Western Bird Watcher. Here is a summary of how the older version compares to the newer:

• It is 15 years older, so there have been some taxonomy updates made between the two.
• It includes far fewer species in both the birdfinding and identification sections. You can also see this reflected in the page count. Even though the two books are just about the same size the newer one has 124 more pages.
• The ID section has fewer illustrations, and they are of a different type. It does include some line drawings and pictures of live birds, but most of the illustrations in the older book are photographs of museum specimens. Specimens of the compared species have been placed next to one another and photographed. In my opinion the line drawings in the newer book are more useful than these photographs. Drawings, provided that they are accurate of course, eliminate any perceived differences due to the individual specimen used and its positioning. The photos here are not without use though, as they give a perspective rarely seen elsewhere (although they would be much more useful in color!).

Otherwise the two are very similar, and cover the same topics.

The older edition has been completely superseded by the newer, and is therefore not recommended. If you have the Western Bird Watcher I would highly recommend upgrading to Birding in the American West.