Tweets:
I wrote:
>In the mid 1880s, even as he had chaired the first AOU Check-List
committee,
>Elliott Coues kept the order within his Key to North American Birds in the
>same order as he had in the 1870s. While he did give an appendix to show
>the relationship between the two guides, Coues realized that some of his
>audience would be confused by a major overhaul of his order. He stated (I
>paraphrase here) that it's better not to introduce the entirety of the
>change all at once--people have grown used to certain orders.
Paul Talbert responded:
I guess I just don't agree with this philosophy at all. When I was a
beginning birder, the order didn't matter to me and the most useful thing
for the short term would have been to group them by size or color or
habitat. As an intermediate birder, I'm sufficently familiar with groupings
that if the sequence were changed, I would notice and would probably wonder
about why the change had occurred, which seems like a desirable outcome. I
know how to use an index if I don't know where to find something. If I were
an advanced birder, I think I would find it even more annoying that a
checklist or field guide would intentionally propagate outdated information.

My further response: The strategies that you list above, color and size,
have been used in guides since Coues was publishing as well. They continue
to be used with some success. The All the Birds guide uses foraging
behavior as its differentiating point. Most of these guides are aimed at a
beginner audience, not an intermediate. People who seek further knowledge
of these points as Paul notes should not rely on field guides to do so.
One also assumes, in taking a scientific stance on a field guide,
that it is a scientific document. I would argue, as I did before, that it
isn't. There is a corporate publishing concern that enters into the
picture. Go into a Barnes & Noble, for example, and at the display.
Houghton Mifflin is trying to sell books to the public, not trying to
educate the public. Peterson certainly realized the value of education, but
Houghton is in it for more than education--that's why Peterson had to waive
his royalties on the first printing in 1934: Houghton saw the guide as a
financial risk. That's why several other publishers turned the project
down.
The question also reflects the fact that, in the American market,
one really wonders if an intermediate field guide exists. NGS is certainly
the closest to it, but there also seems to be a big jump between Peterson
and say, Paulson's Shorebirds or the Helm Series. The more advanced guides,
with a few exceptions, still originate in Europe. Additionally, after
publishing the first few of the Helm Series, those books like Seabirds,
Shorebirds, and Waterfowl, Houghton is not publishing these any
more--they've gone to university presses like Princeton, where a volume for
a small audience is a specialty. Americans have many more shorebirds,
seabirds, and waterfowl, than mannikins, shrikes, and starlings, and
Houghton went with it as long as the $$ was there (this is a bit of
conjecture on my part, but browse a bookstore and see who published which
Helm guide).

Paul asks:
How is the audience to become more knowledgable if they aren't exposed to
current information?

I answer: Some don't want to become more knowledgable. Go on a field trip
with a group of birders whose primary guide is Peterson's Western (1990) and
explain splits among species there. You take the time to do so, and people
do try to learn, but they place authority on what's in print. When I
started helping a bander in 1982, she was labeling towhees as spotted or
eastern; the split came far after that. The average birder hears that it
was studied that long and is daunted somewhat. I, like Paul, try to seek
out information on ID and taxonomy and subscribe to various listservs and
periodicals, but I'm not going to Birdwatcher's Digest or field guides for
this info--one has to seek it.
About 18 months ago, I sent out a survey to see who used what guide.
Kenn Kaufman responded, and basically said he had preferred a notebook to a
field guide since he was 14. He took notes on what he saw, and this made
him a better birder. I played match the picture for years until I started
paying attention to song (I couldn't use the syllibication in the guides and
still don't) and behavior, and this has made the difference. Guides have
their limits, they should be updated for taxonomy sooner and more carefully,
as Paul suggests (we're in agreement on that actually) but they're not.
They haven't been since Ralph Hoffmann wrote. And I end this referring to
Hoffmann intentionally--both Paulson and Garrett & Dunn in Warblers dedicate
their books to Hoffmann. Anyone whose reading this should prowl used book
stores, libraries, and other resources, get a copy of Hoffmann's 1927 Birds
of the Pacific States, and read it cover to cover. In order to get around
guide problems and the visual crutch, go to a guide that's not visual, learn
what it has to say, and apply it in the field.
RK
Ray Korpi
rkorpi at clark.edu
Portland, OR/Clark College, Vancouver WA
President, Oregon Field Ornithologists