A few thought on Sibley's Guide to Birds

I'm pretty sure it was the chemist Robert Boyle who said,
"nothing by authority."

When faced with a work that can only really be described
as monumental, one has to fight the urge to say..."gosh,
this is it..." because there is no "it." Every guide has
its good points and its bad points. The good points that
have been covered by many commentators are certainly true,
but it is important to remember that this is a GUIDE.
I will work to refrain from making claims, because
Sibley says so and I urge others to do so. I will
continue to describe what I saw rather than saying "it
looked just like the picture Sibley drew on page 208" and
I urge others to do so as well.

To complain about Sibley's book is to take on the role
of kvetch. There are so many good things to say about
the effort that those who find fault come off as spoiled
sports, but by following Dave Fix, I don't have to feel
so all alone.

Then again I don't have that many substantial complaints
about the book. I have some color issues...the blue on
the bluebirds and the red on the woodpeckers are a little
too optimistic. And many of the passerines look a little
too gray; some leaning toward blue-gray when they shouldn't.
This may be the publishers fault, the Audubon Society has a
history of getting the colors wrong (how many still use
the red covered photo guide?). It's possible to get those
colors right, just have a look at Lars Jonsson's "Birds of
Europe" so I'm left asking "what were they thinking?"

No, my real complaint is about the hype surrounding this
book and the suggestion that it is the final word.
I doubt that this was the author's intention, but many
reviews gush to the point of leaving this impression.
It is certainly the state of the art. I will undoubtedly
consult it often, but I will also continue to consult the
other ten or so other favorite GUIDES in my library. And
I will continue to listen to the counsel of local and
regional observers like David Fix and Dennis Paulsen and
Harry Nehls...etc, etc, etc, because no field guide can
contain the kind of detail about the Cascadia Region and
the nuances of regional bird identification that can be
found in the combined experience of the folks in our own
backyard. And no guide can replace the brute force
approach of getting out in the field and looking at
thousands of Western Sandpipers most of which do not
look like the perfectly valid generic Western Sandpipers
drawn in Sibley.

--
Mike Patterson Alas, to wear the mantle of Galileo,
Astoria, OR it is not enough to be persecuted
celata at pacifier.com by an unkind establishment,
you must also be right.
---Robert Park
http://www.pacifier.com/~mpatters/bird/bird.html