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The Sibley Guide to Birds
- To: carolinabirds@duke.edu
- Subject: The Sibley Guide to Birds
- From: "Will Cook" <cwcook@duke.edu>
- Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2000 15:49:38 -0400
- Priority: normal
- Sender: carolinabirds-owner@acpub.duke.edu
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