![\"warbler\"](\"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/files\/2013\/08\/warbler-300x199.png\")
<\/p>\nThe bird field guides available today represent an embarrassment of riches.\u00a0 Until the National Geographic Guide was published in 1983, birders had two guides, one by Roger Tory Peterson and one by Chan Robbins, for help in field identification.\u00a0 I cut my ornithological teeth on these two field guides.\u00a0 I well remember the plates in the Peterson guide called confusing fall warblers.\u00a0 Confusing they are!<\/p>\n
The classification of the New World Warblers is confusing as well.\u00a0 In the past couple of years, major changes in our understanding of how these warblers are related have emerged.\u00a0 Many of these insights come from the use of DNA comparisons to assess relatedness.\u00a0 Field guides published in the next few years will have a different arrangement and different scientific names for many of our warblers.\u00a0 As an example, Hooded Warbler, Wilson\u2019s Warbler and Canada Warbler were thought to be closely related and all were placed in the genus Wilsonia<\/i>.\u00a0 Recent research shows that Hooded Warbler is actually closer related to warblers like Northern Parula and Palm Warbler and shares a genus name with these species now.\u00a0 Canada Warbler and Wilson\u2019s Warbler remain in a different genus.<\/p>\n
An extraordinary new field guide will do much to reduce our confusion over field identification and get us used to the new classification scheme of warblers.\u00a0 This book is The Warbler Guide, written by Tom Stephenson and Scott Whittle.\u00a0 Both are accomplished birders and each brings another talent to this guide.\u00a0 Stephenson is a musician and Whittle is a professional photographer.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This soft-bound book is 560 pages long.\u00a0 At 6×9 inches in size, it\u2019s a bit large for a pocket but easily fits in a backpack for field use.<\/p>\n
The first 100 pages provide an introduction to the use of the guide and warbler-specific tips for identification.\u00a0 Most pages are adorned with uniformly excellent photographs of warblers.\u00a0 This guide has literally hundreds of photographs.<\/p>\n
The authors begin with a topographic tour of wablers.\u00a0 The photographs are excellent for showing various feather tracts that are often useful in field identification.\u00a0 Then the authors describe various features to notice on a warbler (with many photos), such as facial contrast, shape, eye-arcs, wing panels and flight-feather edging.\u00a0 A useful section on sexing and ageing warblers is provided.<\/p>\n
The introductory section concludes with a primer on auditory identification.\u00a0 The authors\u2019 approach is perhaps the most innovative aspect of the guide.\u00a0 We learned to identify a male Chestnut-sided Warbler by its \u201cpleased-pleased-pleased-to-meetcha\u201d song.\u00a0 The authors use a different, more objective approach.\u00a0 Songs are broken into phrases and elements, superimposed on element qualities and speed.\u00a0 Sonograms of songs are a prominent feature of this guide.<\/p>\n
The authors next provide \u00a0Visual Finder Guides and a Song Finder Guide to allow an observer to quickly home in on an identification.\u00a0 A Face Quick Finder has 86 photos of side views of all the faces of warbler species on two facing pages.\u00a0 Similar layouts are provided for sideviews, underviews and oblique views of the full body.<\/p>\n
The Song Finder Guide relies on the observer noticing numbers of phrases, the timbre of the notes, changes in pitch and other vocal characteristics to reach an identification.<\/p>\n
The bulk of the guide is made of the individual species accounts.\u00a0 Each account begins with a few symbols showing the shape in silhouette, the tail pattern, general color, range map and specific habitat (e.g., tops of trees).<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s take the Blackburnian Warbler account as an example.\u00a0 Ten pages are provided with 50 color photos (along with 8 photos of warblers that can be confused with Blackburnian).\u00a0 Telegraphic text descriptions augment the photos.\u00a0 Two pages, replete with sonograms, describe the songs of this species.<\/p>\n
This book will be published on July 24.\u00a0 A companion app with sound recordings will appear soon as well.\u00a0 Grab a copy of this guide in time to help with those confusing fall warblers.<\/p>\n
[First published on July 7, 2013]<\/p>\n\n
The bird field guides available today represent an embarrassment of riches.\u00a0 Until the National Geographic Guide was published in 1983, birders had two guides, one by Roger Tory Peterson and one by Chan Robbins, for help in field identification.\u00a0 I cut my ornithological teeth on these two field guides.\u00a0 I well remember the plates in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1281],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":599,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions\/599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}