Field Guides

I love field guides. When I was a kid, I would carry a different field or nature guide with me wherever I went. Frogs, birds, plants, rocks—I was hungry for knowledge for the natural world. Part of that necessity to carry a book may have been due to needing something to read in the days before smartphones and other electronic devices usurped reading material for our attention.

Even know, a field guide is close at hand. I often carry a copy of Kenn Kaufman’s “Guide to Advanced Birding” in my backpack on trips, even when I am not birding.

While these tomes have a plethora of useful information and great illustrations or, in the case of state-specific guides from the ABA, photos, many are impractical for actual field use.

In preparation for traveling to China, for example, I have used two of the most readily available guides: “A Field Guide to the Birds of China”, by MacKinnon and Phillipps; and “Birds of China”, by Liu and Chen. Both have great information for the novice and experienced birder, but there are two primary issues with each. One, both are huge! It is an absolute schlep to carry these abroad. I wind up taking photos of the pages so that I can spare some weight in the field. Two, each includes every possible bird one can see in China, be it a regularly occurring resident bird, such as a Yellow-vented Bulbul, to a one-off vagrant, like a Canada Goose.

Do I really need a field guide to describe a potential vagrant?

Many of these huge field guides are available as eBooks. I appreciate how I can perform a quick word search for the species, enlarge photos, and, in some cases, scan a QR code to hear a bird’s song or call. This is great when studying on the plane or in the hotel room, but when I am seeing a bird sallying among the canopy, I would rather reach for my binos or camera than for my iPad.

So, what is one to do?

One day, I would like to come out with a series of field guides for traveling birders. These future guides would be focused on the particular location. Only those birds one would expect to see there would be featured, along with the relevant information such as size, habitat, diet, and so on. Many guides now include brief descriptions of the geography and nature of the country. These would do the same.

One topic I think should be included that is often omitted is a introduction to the local history, politics, and culture. I can be guilty of not researching the non-birding aspects before I travel, but for my next trips in the coming year, I have been consulting several books to gain more insight. I would like to include such a section in my field guides.

All of these are merely ideas at this time, but I plan to draft a book soon.

Stay tuned!

Let me know thoughts!