About field guides

Field guides can be misleading, can be inaccurate, can be confusing (especially when comparing field guides). If you have trouble identifying birds, you should peruse at least 3 field guides or better yet, 6 field guides. Also, you should dig a little more deeply that what a field guide will present.

Here is an example, non birding, of the latter subject. My neighbor says, “ Go to this local nursery for your roses. They have been in roses for many years. They have hundreds of different roses. Some of the roses are hundreds of years old. The signs say so.”
Okay- the roses are from out of state. They are shipped in bare rooted. Then they are potted. The sign “ one hundred years” means— the species were developed (hybridized) one hundred years ago. Those individual roses were all probably 3 years old.

You are in the field with me. I point out a raptor in the sky and say, “call it.” You say— Accipiter. I say— probably Cooper’s hawk, right? You say — Right. I say because of range maps and habitat, right? You say “right.” I say emphatically “ wrong.”

Explanation: Birders are too “habitat conscious” and are too “ range map dependent.” The first thing to take into account is the season. Then next should be the bird at hand. Then the habitat and the range maps. This is what I mean by the pitfalls of field guides.

You are in the field with me. I point out a raptor in the sky and say “name it.” You say — Accipiter. I say probably a Cooper’s, right. You say— Right. I say “ Why are you leaving Goshawk out of the equation, you should never leave Goshawk out of the equation.”

The real take- away from this story is that there was zero discussion on what was actually observed! NB.