A Guide to Bird Information Resources

Last week the topic was how to know whether a bird is rare. One way is to ask someone, but there are books that can tell you as well. Studying a book in the warmth and comfort of our office or living room is a good option when the weather turns truly wintry and the wind chill is thirty below.

When someone calls to ask about a bird, often they have already looked through the field guide and picked out a species. Two recent calls have been about hawks at the feeder. Sometimes the caller is upset with the "marauder,” but this one was thrilled to have a hawk ripping apart a pigeon just outside the window.

Excited as she was, she still was concerned that the bird might go after a chickadee or cardinal as well. It certainly might, but no hawk can ever clean out your feeder birds, or even come close. The most it can do is catch a few of the young, or old, or less wary ones.

The caller consulted the book and considered peregrine, but wisely decided first on a sharp-shinned hawk, and then, due to the larger size, on a Cooper's hawk. It was an adult bird with a gray back and much red horizontal barring on the chest. A first-year feeder hawk would have dark vertical streaks on the chest.

There used to be only one book to use as a field guide, Peterson's "A Field Guide to the Birds." A paper copy is in my car along with three other field guides that are used now for occasional reference. My favorite is the "Field Guide to the Birds of North America" by the National Geographic Society. Also, there is the “Stokes Field Guide to the Birds," "The Golden Guide to Birds of North America," and a new entry.

This recent new field guide is "All the Birds of North America." It is the only one that significantly changes the order in which the species are presented. The first four present them in the A.O.U. (American Ornithological Union) order. This is traditional, but does have some disadvantages.

This standard organization is based on scientific studies, which place a species in the order in which it is believed they evolved into their present form, oldest to newest. It automatically groups most similar species together, because they have a recent common ancestor, and have not diverged much in form or appearance.

Not all species with similar appearances, habitats or habits are grouped together, however. The new book attempts to remedy that, by placing species together that share the same feeding habits and are the same size. It may prove to be a more useful guide for beginning birders, but it is a too radical departure from the old system to become a standard.

Most useful might be the brief discussions of the common behaviors of various groupings of birds that make them similar to each other and different from other groupings. Sometimes the other guides do not deal enough with the typical behavior of the bird.

Whichever field guide you use, be sure you don't just look at the drawings or photos of the bird, although that is where to start. The maps will show the range of the bird at different seasons, and the text will usually give you at least some idea of the type of habitat the bird prefers and how it behaves.

You may be satisfied with one guide to have near your window as you watch the birds at your feeder or in your yard. If you want to know more or see more than that, then you must join your local bird club. The Allen Bird Club of Springfield meets on the first Monday of each month from October to May, and publishes a booklet listing all the field trips, which are open to everyone.

There are also magazines you can subscribe to. "Bird Observer of Massachusetts" is the bimonthly magazine about birds in our state, and on a continental level there is "Birding," the publication of the American Birding Association. Other magazines are "Bird Watcher's Digest," "Birder's World," and "Wildbird." There are certainly plenty of resources available to learn about birds and birding.