Christmas is a great opportunity to give books to your birding friends and relatives. The first place to start is a good field guide to assist in identification.
I usually go into the field with David Sibley’s The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern America, but also have in my library The National Geographic Society’s Birds of North America, Peterson’s A Field Guide to Birds, and Kenn Kaufman’s Birds of North America, all of which are excellent guides. I refer to them often when verifying the ID of a bird that I have seen.
These field guides are backed up by my library of more than 50 reference or specialized guides. Sibley, for instance, has an expanded version of the field guide (The Sibley Guide to Birds), which is too big to carry into the field but contains a lot more information than the more compact field guide. There are specialized guides for raptors, warblers, shore birds, etc.
Another reference book I have particularly enjoyed is Pete Dunne’s Essential Field Guide Companion. Peter is one of my favorite writers—he not only has a great knowledge of birds but also approaches his obvious passion with a wonderful sense of humor. The book espouses an approach to bird identification called GISS (general impression of size and shape). This guide is a companion to the typical illustrated guide and contains no illustrations. The guide explains how to identify a specific bird through its size, shape, and habit without getting bogged down in details such as lore color and eye rings. Other informative and interesting books he has written are Hawks in Flight, The Wind Masters, Feather Quest, and Tales of a Low-Rent Birder. These books tell tales of birds and birding while providing an insight into the lives of birds and an understanding of their habits and environment.
Last Christmas I was given Letters from Eden—A Year at Home in the Woods, by Julie Zickefoose, which any naturalist would enjoy. Julie is not only a creative writer, but is also an excellent illustrator. She combines both in this book with her observations on nature in winter, spring, summer, and fall. Her commentaries have been heard on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” and she has written articles and illustrated covers for Bird Watcher’s Digest. Julie supplied me with the suet dough recipe that I feed my bluebirds every day (see Wingin’ It, March 30, 2007).
If you are looking to give a “coffee table” book, one I found particularly well done is Arctic Wings—Birds of the Artic National Wildlife Refuge. This book not only contains wonderful photographs and text, it also delves into the impact our unquenchable thirst for oil has on this fragile environment.
For your traveling friends you might look for a field guide to another part of the country or a foreign destination. We have found Mass Audubon in Lincoln has a comprehensive inventory of bird and nature books and offers a 10 percent discount to members. This is also an excellent place to buy binoculars—a subject for another article.
Another idea for your birding friends is a subscription to a birding magazine. I subscribe to Bird Watchers Digest, Birder’s World, and Living Bird (Cornell lab of ornithology’s publication).
David Durrant lives with his wife, Pamela, on East Bare Hill Road at Micheldever Farm, where they run their business, Durrant Design, and watch birds—their own peacocks, chickens, and wild birds.
