Cross-posted to Tweeters with the sender's permission.

>Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 17:54:31 -0400
>Sender: NBHC ID-FRONTIERS Frontiers of Field Identification
> <BIRDWG01 at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU>
>From: David Sibley <dsibley at SHORE.NET>
>Subject: [BIRDWG01] The Sibley Guide
>
>Hi All,
>
>First, Thank You! to all who have written to me privately or publicly
>with comments or suggestions on how to improve my guide. I kept working
>on this project for so many years because I truly enjoyed the process of
>learning and organizing all the information. Now that it's published I'm
>learning even more.
>
>The completion of every book is the result of many compromises. I knew
>my book would never be perfect, but I thought long and hard about every
>small and large decision. I'm extremely pleased with the way it turned
>out.
>
>I don't really consider the book done. To me it is more of a work in
>progress, a collection of my sketches, a summary of all the information
>I've gathered in thirty years of birding, and I look forward to adding
>to it. I will be working constantly to make corrections in each
>printing, and someday there will be a revised edition. To that end I ask
>anyone who has a comment or suggestion to please email me:
>david at sibleyart.com
>
>In the next printing there will be some corrections to errors in "black
>ink", but there will only be a small number of corrections to the color
>plates. I've listed here a few of the more significant corrections that
>are being made in the next printing:
>* "American" Magpie changed back to Black-billed Magpie
>* "Northern" Caracara changed back to Crested Caracara
>* There are apparently records of Cory's (dark morph) Least Bittern from
>Ontario and New York as recently as 1992, so that caption will be
>changed to read simply "very rare". I'm very excited by this news, as I
>had all but given up hope of ever seeing this color morph.
>* The label for "2nd year" Reddish Egret will be changed to "adult
>nonbreeding" and the bright-billed "adult" will be labelled "adult
>breeding". The bright colors are worn by an individual bird for a few
>months when breeding, which can happen almost year-round, but mainly
>about Jan to Jun.
>* The images of perched adult male and female Sharp-shinned and Cooper's
>Hawks should be different sizes to reflect the sexual size dimorphism in
>those species. Scans were inadvertently resized during printing and will
>be corrected.
>* The adult Clay-colored Sparrow image is too dark (apparently two scans
>are superimposed) and will be corrected.
>* The too-bright rufous colors will be tweaked on many pages
>
>The following topics seem to have generated a lot of discussion, and
>while there is no right or wrong answer to any of these, and I don't
>really want to get involved in the debate, I wanted to explain some of
>the reasons for doing the guide the way I did.
>
>Maps: There are certainly errors in the maps, and I'm anxious to hear
>about them. However, it is my impression that a lot of the criticism of
>the maps centers on the placement and the presence or absence of the
>green dots. The dots are truly meant to show continental patterns, not
>local records (though in some cases they are carefully placed, maybe
>that was a bad idea!). In general the idea was to let people know that
>if they saw a bluebird, for example, in New York it was overwhelmingly
>likely to be an Eastern, but Mountain was at least a remote possibility
>and Western was essentially impossible.
>
>For that purpose a random scattering of dots in the eastern US would
>suffice, but I tried to get a little more detailed than that. I did not
>think it was important to place every dot exactly, or even to confirm
>that state records were accepted, as long as the reports fit the general
>pattern for each species. Nevertheless I'd like to hear of ANY problems
>with the maps.
>
>People know their local region very well, much better than any book
>could ever represent. It's only natural for them to look carefully at
>their local patch on any map and to be very critical of the details that
>are wrong. Just for conversation's sake (or to stoke the entreprenurial
>spirit) I'd suggest any group of people with good GIS knowledge and a
>set of state breeding bird atlases, a set of christmas counts, and a
>stack of state bird books, connections to each rare bird committee, and
>a whole lot of time could develop a working data base and set of range
>maps for the birds of North America. There would be a pretty good market
>for these maps!
>
>Subspecies names: I'll probably continue to take criticism for this, but
>I stand by my decision to avoid using Latin subspecies names. The
>reasons are spelled out in some detail on my website - www.sibleyart.com
>- and I'll reiterate here. While there are a few cases in which
>subspecies are well-defined and consistently named (such as Short-billed
>Dowitcher and Lesser Black-backed Gull) the vast majority are much less
>clear-cut. I spent weeks working solely on this problem, researching
>names and groupings of subspecies, and found the results frustratingly
>inconsistent and unclear. When I came up with the idea of using the
>natural ecological regions to define subspecies groups it made my work
>much easier. It also helped me to understand the variation I had been
>studying for twenty years! In a sense it was like taking a step back
>from the detail of subspecies names and looking at the larger patterns.
>I feel that most observers should NOT use Latin subspecies names, as the
>names imply a kind of precision that is lacking in field observations.
>It is much more realistic to label a bird as typical of a certain region
>than it is to try to give it an exact subspecies name. Anyone who wants
>to learn the Latin names has many options of other books for that
>purpose.
>
>Again, this was not a snap decision - but it was what I felt was best.
>It may indicate a general weakness of character, but I can live with
>that.
>
>Humphrey-Parkes molt terminology: My reasons for avoiding this
>terminology are similar to the subspecies argument. In both cases I
>believe that experts should discourage casual use of technical terms. My
>experience with birders is that most simply substitute the
>Humphrey-Parkes terminology for the more intuitive "life-year" system;
>thus breeding equals alternate and nonbreeding equals basic. This is
>certainly not the case and using the terms in this way clouds their
>meaning. The Humphrey-Parkes terminology is an important tool meant
>to aid in the study of molt, and that is how it should be used. I
>encourage anyone with an interest in molt to learn it, as understanding
>the terminology and learning the correct way to apply it can enhance
>one's understanding of molt cycles. Applying it broadly in a field guide
>(to many species whose molts have never been studied) would be
>pointless. Finally, I suggest that anyone who disagrees should spend a
>few days trying to relabel all of the illustrations in the guide with
>H-P terms (watch for "worn definitive basic male Snow Bunting" and
>"definitive basic/definitive alternate Marsh Wren"). Note also the
>recent, and very logical, suggestion by Steve Howell in Western Birds
>for a significant revision of the Humphrey-Parkes terminology.
>
>I'm interested in following any discussion about my book. Please feel
>free to cross-post this message on other listservs; and again please
>forward or send to me any comments, suggestions, or corrections (but
>I'll be on the road for most of November, so don't expect a quick
>response).
>
>Finally, let me say again that I encourage any comments and discussion
>about the book, it can only lead to more knowledge and a better
>understanding of the birds. I have lots to learn about bird
>identification. If this book sparks us to go out and prove or disprove
>anything I've written, GREAT! Better still, I hope it sparks people to
>go out and learn lots of new stuff that none of us know now.
>
>Good Birding,
>David Sibley
>
>355 Lexington Rd
>Concord, MA 01742
>dsibley at shore.net
>www.sibleyart.com