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God has a sense of humor when it
comes to birds. Because what He has
done is create a huge distraction
for people whose sole reason for
living is to be able to one day say
"I've found them all." And you can
join these folks with this book,
which obviously, when you read the
Acknowledgements, is a labor
of love. Bill Thompson started it in 1996 with a team
-- his best friend and
expert birder Eirik A. T. Blom and
Bill's future wife Julie Zickefoose.
Julie did the beautiful watercolor
illustrations while Eirik did all
the writing and Bill handled editing
and publishing. The book took 9
years to get published, and sadly,
in 2002, Eirik passed away. But Bill
carried on, using four writers
culled from
Bird Watcher's Digest. It was
worth the effort.
Roger Tory
Peterson, the father of American
bird watching, reminds us that
"birds have wings and tend to use
them," meaning we should look at the
bird more carefully than the bird
book, and learn to trust our
instincts.
Basically Identify Yourself
is divided up by species, so each
chapter coves a particular type of
bird: waterfowl, wading birds,
hawks, and so on. My yard is full of
sparrows so I started there and was
instantly reassured:
"North America's sparrow species'
appearance and size are the genesis
of the term "LBJ" or "little brown
job." Of course not all our
sparrows are either little or brown
-- but most are both. Some sparrows
are distinctive enough at a glace
that identification should be no
problem. It's when we get into the
very similar sparrow species that we
find identification more difficult
to pin down. Not only are many
sparrows LBJs in the truest sense of
the phrase, but they are also
skulkers -- they hide in the
underbrush, pop up for a quick peek,
then vanish once more."
After giving the basics of IDing
Sparrows, the book goes into
subchapters that explore each
Sparrow genus, Songlike, Spizella,
Ammodramous, and Crowned.
Don't let the Latin scare you, he
breaks it down. You will find
details on bill color, head and
breast pattern, and then each
species is given an overview of the
identification features. By the time
you are done with this chapter
sparrows will never elude you again.
One
section of the book I found most
insightful is called "Top 20 Rules
of the Bird Identification Game,"
which says that Roger Tory Peterson,
the father of American bird watching,
reminds us that "birds have wings
and tend to use them," meaning we
should look at the bird more
carefully than the bird book, and
learn to
trust our instincts. Start at the
top and work down and back as you
view the bird, size sometimes lies,
and more gems like this make
Identify Yourself on the best books
I have found on bird watching and
the perfect adjunct to this web
site.
See what other people think of
Identify Yourself : The 50 Most Common Birding Identification Challenges at Amazon.
Mitchell Waite
May 26, 2005 |
