Peterson Reference Guide to Birding by Impression (1 Viewer)

[jedigrant]

I love the birding by impression (BBI) approach advocated by this new book, but I'm somewhat disappointed with the book itself. The bulk of it is a look at bird groups through the BBI lens. I'm most disappointed with the group accounts, as they can be very generic and not specific enough. The best parts are direct comparison between confusing species, such as male Cooper’s vs female Sharp-shinned Hawk, and Antillean vs Common Nighthawk. I just wish there were more of these comparisons.

Another good feature is the use of quiz photos. A good number of the photo groups don't identify the birds in the captions, but rather do so in the back. These are designed to get you to look critically at the images and apply the information presented in the text.

Overall, I think this approach has something to offer all birders, regardless of skill level. But the information in the book is more relevant to new and intermediate birders, with the exception of the odd tips that even most experts should appreciate.

Here's my full review of Peterson Reference Guide to Birding by Impression

 

[James Jobling]

Interesting concept, altho' not new - this is jizz by another name (cf. 'Birds by Character. The Fieldguide to Jizz Identification', by Wallace, et al., 1990, Macmillan London, which deals with British and European birds)

 

[Jim M.]

The best parts are direct comparison between confusing species, such as male Cooper’s vs female Sharp-shinned Hawk, and Antillean vs Common Nighthawk. I just wish there were more of these comparisons.

Another good feature is the use of quiz photos. A good number of the photo groups don't identify the birds in the captions, but rather do so in the back.

Perhaps the existence of “Pete Dunne's Essential Field Guide Companion” deterred the authors from devoting too much space to individual species accounts/comparisons? Of course, that book has individual accounts emphasizing GISS for almost every North American bird. But I'd agree that specifics are more useful for this kind of approach, and the approach in the Dunne book might be more useful if it were directly accompanied by drawings. I think Kenn Kaufman also made a mistake in going light on individual species specifics in his second edition of "Advanced Birding"--he cited the availability of lots of info via the internet as a reason not to include more specifics.

As for quizzes, they are fine but putting the answers in the back of the book can be a pain. It certainly is in The Shorebird Guide. When you use the latter as a reference to quickly refresh your recollection on how to identify a particular species, you don't want to have waste time flipping back and forth to the back of the book for the “answers”. Why not simply print the answers upside down in small type on the same page? – a common practice for printed quizzes.

Interesting concept, altho' not new - this is jizz by another name (cf. 'Birds by Character. The Fieldguide to Jizz Identification', by Wallace, et al., 1990, Macmillan London, which deals with British and European birds)

The Cape May School (birding by impression/GISS/JIZZ) often cites the 1988 Hawks in Flight (guide to No. Am. raptors) as one of the first books to advocate their approach. But you can see it in the first modern field guide, Peterson's Field Guide to the Birds (of eastern North America) which came out in 1934. I no longer have my early edition, but I believe some or all of these features in my 1980 edition were in the first or early editions as well:

–the front of the book has 28 roadside silhouettes, and the back 26 flight silhouettes, all drawn to scale. This is one of the most effective ways I have seen to encourage birders to learn to identify birds by size and shape first, rather than plumage. I think all field guides ought to have these.

–The introduction “How to Identify Birds” starts out with recommending a series of questions a birder consider in determining identification of a bird: what is the bird's size?, what is its shape?, what shape are its wings?, what shape is its bill?, what shape is its tail?, how does it behave?, does it climb trees?, how does it fly?, does it swim?, does it wade?, what are its field marks?

Note in particular that the question about field marks comes at the very end of this list. So GISS is really just the first stage of "the Peterson method." However, presenting GISS birding as a new approach was probably a useful corrective because Peterson was so good at presenting field marks that a lot of birders tended to skip the preliminaries and go straight to them.

 

[jurek]

As James said, jizz is very old type of birding skill. It is nice to see there are still birders good in finding and identifying distant and moving birds.

I have the impression that modern birders call themselves good, because they make photos, demand photos from others, and reject the idea that most birds don't sit still and let themselves be photographed.

 

[jedigrant]

Indeed, this approach is not new. The authors try to differentiate it from GISS/jizz, but the arguments they use are tenuous at best.

Perhaps the existence of “Pete Dunne's Essential Field Guide Companion” deterred the authors from devoting too much space to individual species accounts/comparisons?

I kept thinking something similar. I *love* Dunne's Companion. I guess I wanted something more like that. But why try to write something that has already been written? I don't know...I can understand why they went a slightly different direction, even if it didn't completely work for me.

 

[James Jobling]

Is this the earliest protonym for the term 'jizz'? Working on HBWAlive Key to Scientific Names in Ornithology I came across John Gould's 1868 diagnosis for the genus Drymochares (preoccupied, and replaced by Heteroxenicus Sharpe, 1902), where he refers to the tout ensemble being sufficient to justify the separation of Gould's Shortwing H. stellatus. Gould may not have been a birdwatcher, but he certainly had a way with words!

 

[MJB]

Is this the earliest protonym for the term 'jizz'? Working on HBWAlive Key to Scientific Names in Ornithology I came across John Gould's 1868 diagnosis for the genus Drymochares (preoccupied, and replaced by Heteroxenicus Sharpe, 1902), where he refers to the tout ensemble being sufficient to justify the separation of Gould's Shortwing H. stellatus. Gould may not have been a birdwatcher, but he certainly had a way with words!

Hi James,
As you very probably know, as well as being a near-literal hijacking of the original French* words into the English language, the term 'toute ensemble' was a euphemism from at least the Victorian era used in British polite middle-class society for nakedness or nudity, because it was a convenient and notionally more obscure faux translation punning synonym than the feebler 'being in the altogether'. I can remember my great-aunt's generation using it.

I am pretty sure that Gould was aware of the propensity of doctors and taxonomists to use Latin or French to describe 'delicate' or 'sensitive ' subjects that should be kept from women and children!
MJB
PS In the 1952 film 'Hans Christian Andersen', Danny Kaye sang 'The king is in the altogether...'
*More than a few French phrases that have found their way into the English language don't have the same meaning in French!