Comments on: A New Field Guide to the Birds from The Smithsonian https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/04/25/a-new-field-guide-to-the-birds-1/ Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:14:17 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.6 By: Lou FCD https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/04/25/a-new-field-guide-to-the-birds-1/#comment-534916 Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:14:17 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/04/25/a-new-field-guide-to-the-birds-1/#comment-534916 Oh, P.S. Thanks for the review. My birthday is Friday and I’ll ask for that to add to my Peterson’s and Audubon guides.

]]> By: Lou FCD https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/04/25/a-new-field-guide-to-the-birds-1/#comment-534915 Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:12:35 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/04/25/a-new-field-guide-to-the-birds-1/#comment-534915 Yes, but what if the goldfinch is angry AND lost in the woods?

What if it is angrily mating while lost in the woods? What then? I bet you don’t have no fancy schmancy CD for that, do ya’?

And what if the goldfinch is angrily mating with a member of the same sex while crapping on the heads of a bunch of Republican Bachman/Palin supporting fundies at an Easter Sunday sunrise blood cult cannibalism service… hmmm.. did I put way too much thought into that, or what?

]]> By: Greg Laden https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/04/25/a-new-field-guide-to-the-birds-1/#comment-534914 Sun, 26 Apr 2009 16:46:44 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/04/25/a-new-field-guide-to-the-birds-1/#comment-534914 Good point: I someday hope to own all of the old Peterson guides. I have most of them already.

]]> By: CalderaGal https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/04/25/a-new-field-guide-to-the-birds-1/#comment-534913 Sun, 26 Apr 2009 13:59:00 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/04/25/a-new-field-guide-to-the-birds-1/#comment-534913 Updating your field guide library.
This should be done every 5 years or so, but don’t pitch the old editions – save them for comparisons. Due to hybridization, climate changes, urbanization, and other factors, species appearance and ranges change. So older guides are not as helpful as newer ones. Also photography gets better and better.

]]> By: CalderaGal https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/04/25/a-new-field-guide-to-the-birds-1/#comment-534912 Sun, 26 Apr 2009 13:54:32 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/04/25/a-new-field-guide-to-the-birds-1/#comment-534912 This is a good guide. and yes, a serious birder needs to have several guides. I like Sibley’s the best. Audio files are great but bird calls and songs can vary widely. For example, the Clark’s nutcrackers at our Cornell Lab of Ornithology Project FeederWatch site – one has no voice. It rattles its beak. When it is triangulating on a cache, the two other birds in the trio make different sounds. A few have learned to speak an English word or two. They winter with Stellar’s jays, who can imitate red-tail hawks, snowmobiles, nutcrackers, crossbills, and more. The nutcracker and jay recordings we have made (on video) sound quite different from any we have downloaded. Obviously, bird feeder sites, like ours, that have been active for several years, have an effect on bird sounds and other behavior.

]]> By: mark https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/04/25/a-new-field-guide-to-the-birds-1/#comment-534911 Sun, 26 Apr 2009 10:36:27 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/04/25/a-new-field-guide-to-the-birds-1/#comment-534911 I’d like to see a DVD that showed bird flight (particularly raptors) as an aid to identification. “Hawks in Flight” (1988) by Dunne, Sibley & Sutton is a book that attempts to cover this aspect, but a narrated video would be a great improvement.

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