Field guides

[Anthony Overs <>]

Hi Erika

Great questions.

I encourage all birders, especially beginners, to own more than one field guide. I think it's important to compare artists' interpretations of the same species. You will end up having a favourite guide for various reasons. The information in Pizzey is exceptional. It's my preferred guide, with Simpson and Day second. I dislike the Morcombe paintings (he's a great photographer), but the iphone app is very useful, particularly for calls. I dislike Slater's guide in general, particularly the paintings. I tend to only update my favourite guide. Updating your guide means you can keep up with taxonomic changes, range
extensions, etc. Some guides increase their geographical coverage and
some replace or update some paintings. Get the new Simpson and Day and you'll be surprised by the changes in plates, updated distribution maps, etc. Keep the one your Grandma gave you in your heritage bookshelf!

I advise against choosing a guide simply based on size, weight or convenience to carry. Choose one to carry with the paintings, information and maps that you like the best. I've seen people using all sorts of shoulder bags, bum bags, nail bags, etc, for comfortably carrying the larger guides. In some parts of the world there is only one guide so you don't have a choice, you carry it as best you can. Sometimes you have to carry more than one guide - in Mongolia a few years back I had to take Birds of Europe and Birds of East Asia to cover everything (this was on advice from the author of the Birds of Mongolia due for release this June!).

Regarding marking your guides, I used to do this, with pencil and despite my dislike for writing in books in general. The maps in Simpson and Day had the little boxes on the side that were convenient for tick marks. However, transferring any ticks, locations, notes, etc, into a new edition of a guide seemed pointless. I prefer a little notebook for records and enter those into a spreadsheet when back home. As others have said, each to their own.

Con's advice regarding trips to new areas is excellent. Get a list of things you might expect to see at a given location and study up. There are plenty of lists for parks and reserves, regions and countries. Wikipedia can be a good start when looking for country lists. Doing a bit (or a lot) of homework prior to a trip is hugely beneficial.

I recommend to people that attend my beginners walks that they study their local guides when they can to familiarise themselves with different groups or families of birds and the taxonomic order in general. It certainly helps when you see something you don't know; you have a fair idea of where to start looking in the guide. If you see something that looks like a 'finch' you automatically know that it's not going to be in the first half of the guide with the ducks, waders, birds of prey, etc. I started to recommend this to people after I watched a person try to look up Red-browed Finch by flicking through the guide, starting at Emu...

Cheers
Anthony

On 25 February 2013 01:23, Erika Roper <> wrote:

Hello all,

I recently acquired a new field guide (Parrots of the World, by Forshaw) and I began wondering about how others use field guides. Is it common for birders to annotate their field guides (i.e. add additional common names to species entries), and to note in the guide when and where they have seen a species? I was also wondering how many of you "study" before taking a trip to a new place, in order to memorise species that you may encounter.

I love field guides, and if I had the money I'm sure I would be buying new ones all the time. I suppose next on my list should be a current version of an Australian field guide, as my current copy (given to me by my grandma) is as old as I am (Simpson and Day, published in 1986)! Which reminds me, is it actually worth investing in an up-to-date copy? Any recommendations for which guide to get (author-wise)?

Thanks!

Erika