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The Sibley Guide to Birds



I got my copy of the Sibley Guide to Birds yesterday (10/17), courtesy of 
the National Audubon Society (CBC compilers who entered counts on the web 
get a free copy).  This tome is a bit too big and heavy (1.2 kg) for 
carrying in the field all the time, but it's perfect for keeping in the car.
It has many innovative and outstanding features, such as the family 
introductions, which show small illustrations of each species one on or two 
pages, highly detailed range maps that depict vagrant records, comprehensive 
illustrations of variations in plumage (gulls are particularly great), and 
illustrations of most species in flight.

The book is copiously and wonderfully illustrated, with almost all the 
paintings much more true-to-life than in the National Geographic Society 
guide, though I must admit that my first impression was "wow, those 
illustrations are small!"  Most of them are postage-stamp sized and all the 
ones I checked were significantly smaller than comparable ones in the NGS.  
The text is also quite small.  This is not a problem for me -- I think it's 
better to pack in more information and illustrations of different variations 
than have fewer larger illustrations -- but some people may need a 
magnifying glass to use the book.  One apparent printing problem with the 
book is an oversaturation of reds, oranges, and yellows in many of the 
plates.

The range maps are very good and ambitious -- larger and easier to read than 
those in the NGS plus they show migration routes and extralimital records.  
Oddly, I could not find an explanation in the book as to what the colors in 
the maps mean.  It's pretty easy to figure out, though, that orange=summer, 
blue=winter, purple=all year, yellow=migration, and green dots=unusual 
records.  The green dots are a great idea, but when you show this amount of 
detail, there are bound to be many omissions and mistakes.  Taking a look at 
central NC, which I'm most familiar with, the green dot coverage is spotty --
 (1) there are a good number of green dots missing, (2) one or two green 
dots that are not on the state list, (3) some that should have dots instead 
of swaths of yellow, (4) some that should have yellow instead of dots, and 
(5) some that should have yellow instead of orange.  

Examples:
(1) Most inland NC hurricane-related birds are omitted, such as White-tailed 
Tropicbird, Leach's Storm-petrel, Black-capped Petrel, Audubon's and Sooty 
Shearwaters, and Sandwich Tern.  Dozens of non-hurricane rarities and not-so-
rarities are omitted too.

(2) American (Black-billed) Magpie -- there's an old sighting from Chapel 
Hill that the NC records committee probably discounted as an escape, though 
it seems to fit the geographic pattern depicted in Sibley.

(3) Long-billed Dowitcher.

(4) White Ibis, Black-bellied Plover, Western Sandpiper, Ruddy Turnstone, 
Short-billed Dowitcher, Buff-breasted Sandpiper (some of these don't even 
have dots!).

(5) Cattle Egret, Black-crowned Night-Heron.

One more negative is that it's not comprehensive, as you might expect in a 
book of this size -- missing are things like Yellow-nosed and Black-browed 
Albatrosses, Bermuda Petrel (though Fea's makes it!), Whiskered Tern, and 
extinct or presumed extinct birds such as Carolina Parakeet, Ivory-billed 
Woodpecker, and Bachman's Warbler.

Overall, though, it's the best guide available to the birds of northern 
North America.


-- 
Charles W. "Will" Cook                  w 919-660-7423
http://www.duke.edu/~cwcook            cwcook@duke.edu
Box 90340, Biology Dept., Duke Univ., Durham, NC 27708