Book Review: Captivate!

Captivate: The science of succeeding with people. 2017. Vanessa Van Edwards. Portfolio Penguin. 308 pages.

This book has changed my life. It's that simple. And I am not over-stating it.

I'm a few months away from completing my 60th year of life. But, frankly, I have never learned how people work. I've never understood them. Why don't they behave in a logical manner? Why don't I?

Now I know. I know what to do and say in social situations. I understand. Now I just need practice. I'm on my third time studying through the book in the 6 weeks since receiving it.

The book is introduced with the words: "Hi, my name is Vanessa, and I'm a recovering awkward person." (page 1) Here's a person who got hives and uncontrollable hiccups in social situations. She started studying human behavior in the same manner she studied science and math. Then she'd set up social experiments and record the results. This book is the result.

When she found herself in a conversation, she relates: "My mind was always spinning trying to think of what I was going to say next. I couldn't really process what people were saying because I was too busy trying to think of witty jokes, dazzling stories, and clever responses.... I was... turning people off by my distractedness." (page 74)

And as far as understanding people, Van Edwards says: "I used to find people intimidating. I couldn't keep personality differences straight. And I found it impossible to figure out behavior--let alone predict needs." (page 127)

This is me! Or has been. The insights and techniques given apply to all human social interaction--professional, social, romantic.

The book starts out simply with first impressions. Body language. Posture. Eye contact.

Then, How are you? Where you from? What do you do? These social scripts are boring and require no thought. Get rid of small talk! Ask novel, pleasure-inducing, questions. People will remember you and seek your company.

Be impressed by the person you are speaking with. Everyone has a fascinating story... if you can find it. Mirror and match the emotions of people you are speaking with. Really pay attention to the person you are talking with and nothing else! Be on the constant lookout for common interest threads, and reasons to say; "me too!"

The real meat of the book starts in Chapters 6-9.

The 7 universal microexpressions are explained. These involuntary facial expressions are exhibited by all people when they feel intense emotions. Look for these to understand the true emotions of people when they are listening to you, and detect lies when they are speaking.

Understand and predict behaviors based on the 5-factor model of personality (OCEAN). Learn how to quickly read a person's personality. We can't change someone else's personality. But we can learn how to appeal to each type and get along with anyone.

Likewise, everyone has different ways of showing love and feeling appreciation. The 5 love languages apply to all relationships. Don't feel appreciated at work or home? Your love language probably doesn't match your boss or partner. Know what you need so you can ask for the appreciation you desire. Figure out the love language of others so you can give the exact love and appreciation they want. Avoid needless arguments.

Each of us has a primary value that drives our behaviors, actions, and decisions. Find our own from the list of 6 primary values. Then watch the other person's behaviors to infer their primary value and motivations. What need are they trying to fill in every human interaction?

Vanessa Van Edwards creates a chart for every person in her life that contains their personality type, appreciation language, and primary value. She shows how to use this chart of our own important people as a guide to build a constructive and understanding relationship with each person in our lives.

Really connect with people through stories. Empower others by giving buy-in, control, and ownership. Don't try too hard to be perfect. Share vulnerabilities. Don't hide your mistakes. The right people will like you for them.

Do you have a toxic person in your life? Learn how to handle emotional people. Don't argue with emotions--validate them. Seek the root cause or fear. Understand what brought it about. Only when the emotions are gone do you try to solve the problem. Be their ally--"How can I help?" The NUT job: Name, Understand, Transform.

The book ends with Chapter 14. My summary of this chapter is as follows: Sincere curiosity makes one incredibly engaging. We all share the desire to feel valued--loved, needed, understood. The key to being popular is to like more people. Show people you enjoy being with them. Help people feel like they belong.

- - -

Are you tired of not understanding the bizarre behavior and motivations of the people in your life? Are you ready to do something about it? You need this book. It very well may change your life as it has mine.

I didn't know any of this 2 months ago. I noticed my social interactions with people improved before I got even a third of the way into the book. I actually enjoy socializing now--though as an introvert I want more one-on-one situations and not large, loud groups. And I want to take a quiet nature walk after a larger social event. Now I know why.

Vanessa Van Edwards on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/vvanpetten/featured

And the website: https://www.scienceofpeople.com/captivate/

Review: Birds of the Pacific Northwest

I got a call from a former workmate that I had mail left at my old address. When I stopped in I found it was a copy of Birds of the Pacific Northwest: a photographic guide by Tom Aversa, Richard Cannings, and Hal Opperman, 2016.

Mr Opperman had contacted me a couple of years ago about using my photographs in a bird book he was writing. I had long since lost the emails and forgot about the project.

When I opened the book, I noted one of my photos every few pages. The book uses over 70 of my photographs. In the past I have sold the use of some of my photos. But more often I've allowed them to be used--often in trade for one of the finished products--a new bird book! It gives me satisfaction that I can share my photos in this way--share the birds--rather than having the photos stored as magnetized particles on my computer's hard drive where no one can enjoy them.

The birds in the Pacific Northwest are an area of expertise for me, especially Oregon, as I birded there about 37 years in total (1972-1979, 1985-2013). And I've reviewed many bird books. So, even though I received this book as "compensation," and 70 of the 900 bird photos were mine, I think I can offer an honest and unbiased review in 5 words:

This is a great book!

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I've moved a lot in my life and my former 25 feet of shelf space for bird books and magazines has been whittled away by necessity and digital replacement. I've only kept the best of the best. My bird books now occupy less than 6 feet of bookshelf. Seven of those books deal with the status of birds in Oregon.

I treasure a hard-bound 1940 edition of Gabrielson and Jewett's Birds of Oregon that I found in a bookstore in Hillsboro, Oregon in 2006. I had a paperback reprint of this book from 1970 that I probably picked up about 1975 and wore completely out. This book details the status and distribution of birds in Oregon from Lewis and Clark in 1805 to about 1935.

From then to end of the 20th century a worthy companion to that early work is Birds of Oregon: a general reference, 2003, edited by David B. Marshall, Matthew G. Hunter, and Alan L. Contreras. I was privileged to write about 20 species accounts in that book. It is over-sized (9x12) with 752 pages.

Both of these previous books are status and distribution. They have very few bird illustrations (and the few they have are black-and-white photos or line drawings). They are more about the when and where of the birds (population, behavior, breeding, habitat and diet) and not about the identification at all. Thus, there are many range maps. These books are mostly text. They are for serious locality-based birders.

If you want illustrations and identification descriptions of all the plumages for males, females, and immatures, then you can't go wrong with the National Geographic (2011, 6th Ed.) or Sibley (2014, 2nd Ed.) field guides. They show 900+ species for North America, but the range maps are not very precise when it comes to showing range at the state level, or smaller. These are a bit too "advanced" for beginners, and as they cover all of North America north of Mexico, they have about double the number of species covered as one would likely find in just Oregon.

For a beginner book, my wife likes the Lone Pine Press Birds of Oregon, 2003, by Roger Burrows and Jeff Gilligan. It shows only 328 of the most likely birds in Oregon (of about 515 possible). It has nice big paintings of a typical individual in adult male breeding plumage. It has detailed local maps for range, and plumage and behavioral descriptions for identification. It generally does not show females or immatures, or even males in winter plumage, so it is likely you'll see a common bird in an unfamiliar plumage, or a somewhat unusual bird not covered at all, and won't be able to identify it with this book alone.

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Now we come to the new Birds of the Pacific Northwest: a photographic guide. It is a 464-page book, appropriate in dimensions (5.5 x 8.5 inches) for a large pocket-sized field guide (though not as large as the Sibley). It has 900 photos of males, females, immatures, and field-identifiable subspecies as appropriate. Each species account covers description, similar species, status & distribution, habitat associations, behavior & feeding, and vocalizations. Finally, it has 400 very accurate maps showing breeding, wintering, and migration range in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, southern British Columbia and Alberta, to the continental divide of Montana and extreme western Wyoming and sw Manitoba.

This guide has all the best parts of the above status & distribution references and the best popular North American field guides. It has only birds that occur in the local region, at least once annually. So very rare birds that occur less than once every year somewhere in the Pacific Northwest are not covered. 412 species are covered--a good compromise not to cover perhaps 175 additional species that may occur once per decade, or less.

It has status and distribution without being too in-depth. Identification, illustrations, and detailed maps help beginners limit their options. This could easily be the only field guide one would need in the Pacific Northwest, from beginner, intermediate, and up to the early stages of advanced birders (immature gulls, etc., aren't well explained).

Okay, this book is not perfect. The wonderfully accurate maps have a flaw.

If you read the explanation of the maps, you will note that the mapped range of "migration" includes regular migration of common species where the species neither breeds nor spends the winter. As an example, the abundant Red-necked Phalarope is mapped accurately as a migrant across the Pacific Northwest, but not in the Cascade mountains or coastal forests of western Oregon and Washington, as one would expect.

But the "migration" label also includes the migratory range of very rare migrants. An example is Tennessee Warbler. It is mapped as summering in the Rocky mountains in NW Montana and northward, I assume accurately. However, it is shown as a migrant in all habitats of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and more. Yet, actually, Tennessee Warblers migrate primarily east of the Rocky Mountains and are rare anywhere in Washington and Oregon, with usually only a handful of records each year, if that, primarily from desert oases east of the Cascades. In 40 years I've only seen Tennessee Warbler once in the Pacific Northwest--and it was initially found by someone else.

I understand the difficulty in mapping migrants, abundant to less-than-annual. But when every breeding and wintering species is mapped so accurately, having rare migrants mapped so broadly and inaccurately in every habitat, makes no sense. It ruins one of the best features of this volume. I'm sure the authors agonized over this. I think they made the wrong decision. Personally, I wouldn't show the migratory range for very rare occurrences. Leave it empty as they did for the casual (less than annual) migration of Black-throated Sparrows west of the Cascades. The text does explain migratory status fairly accurately ("casual" and "rare" are explained on page 26 of the introduction), but the large bright yellow migration map covering entire groups of states without habitat breaks screams, "I could have seen this bird here." Leave the map empty where a species is less than annual and explain in the text that it might show up in certain locations, seasons, and habitats.

Only one other minor quibble. I would have tried to find a way to include a life list checklist, either at the end of the book or in each species account.

I believe this is the most useful regional field guide to the birds in the northwest corner of the contiguous United States.

Here is the publisher's page and ordering information:
http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/AVEBIR.html

Book Review: The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling

I don't know what caused my recent renewed interest in nature journaling. Maybe my bird watching had become superficial--see a bird, identify it, write it down, take a photo, move on. My link to enjoying birds, and thus nature, had simply become a game of tag--I was playing tag by just naming the birds I saw as fast as I could. I wanted something more meaningful; I wanted a deeper connection with not just birds, but all of the natural world.

However it started, by October of last year my decades-long latent interest in nature journaling reached a tipping point. I began watching nature journaling videos on YouTube and bought a couple of books on the subject. I dug through boxes and found the unopened set of quality colored pencils I had been packing around for years. I went to Michaels art supply store and bought graphite pencils and a sketchbook. I was hooked!

And then, toward the end of December, it arrived: The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling. 2016. John Muir Laws. 303 pages. Heyday, Berkeley, California.

Buy from the author.

Nature Journaling is observing and recording individual organisms in nature primarily by means of words and artwork. Record the date, location, and weather (metadata), and it becomes a simple scientific document. The nature journal can be the foundation for an educational curriculum, teaching science, art, writing and poetry, and mathematics. Or it can just be an enjoyable way to focus your nature observation activities.

Mr. John Muir Laws ("Jack") truly lives up to his famous namesake. And his new book? Fantastic. I studied it cover to cover. And by "study" I mean every day for 21 days I underlined and took notes on every page and followed his art instruction as it pertains to graphite and colored pencils, saving watercolor and gouache for a future time.

Mr. Laws promotes the call to "slow down, observe, discover, and see" with "intentional curiosity." Record your observation in order to...

Notice something you would not have seen;

Remember details you would have forgotten;

Stoke the fires of curiosity and have a tool to explore;

Fall more deeply in love with the [natural] world.

The first 69 pages discuss the nature journaling concept. It discusses different projects one could choose to investigate in their journal, as well as prompts and ideas one could include. Each person's journal is unique, depending upon what they notice in nature and how they respond to it. Mr. Laws stresses that you do not have to be a naturalist or an artist (there's no such thing as an "art gene")--just record and draw what you see and your nature knowledge and art skills ("pretty pictures") will come as an eventual result of practice and prolonged observation and questioning. I love the thought of turning a not-so-good-as-art drawing into a wonderful diagram by adding notes and arrows to it, taking both the attention and the pressure off the drawing, adding density and clarity of information. Every page of Laws' book is packed with examples from his own journals.

Mr. Laws stresses that he struggles with dyslexia. But he doesn't let the sometimes resulting misspelled words shame him from writing in his journal and sharing with others his journal page entries. He thus encourages others to overcome their fear of putting writing or sketches on paper--the writing and artistic skills will develop with practice--anyone can do it.

Page 70 starts a section on the supplies you might want to add to your nature journal field kit--as differentiated from what you might have at home in your "art studio." The emphasis is on easy, quick, and light weight. This allows and encourages you to make quick sketches and notes in the field that you can finish or improve upon later.

Page 84 starts the chapters on nature drawing--an art class! How to draw: Posture, Proportions, Angles. Shading. Color theory (forget red, yellow, and blue as primary colors, it's cyan, yellow, and magenta--just like in your printer). Details. Depth. Contour drawing. Gesture drawing. Negative shapes. Measured drawings. Constructed drawings. Composition.

Then, on page 126 starts media-specific techniques for graphite, colored pencils, ink, water color, and gouache. Laws counsels to find a medium you enjoy and then practice--you don't have to master each medium, though they all begin with a drawing of the underlying basic shape.

Next up, starting on page 154, is How to draw animals, from bugs to salamanders to birds and bears. He covers foreshortening and has many step-by-step instructions. He shows how to create dull and bumpy or smooth and shiny or even iridescent beetles. Slimy salamander skin. Transparent dragonfly wings. Snake scales. Birds from all angles. How to hint at feather groupings rather than drawing every feather so that your bird doesn't turn into a pine cone drawing. He delves into anatomy to show how skin overlays muscles and creates shadows on mammals. How to draw longer fur.

How to draw wildflowers starts on page 220. Trees near and far starts on page 250. Both are covered with the thoroughness of the section on how to draw animals.

Landscapes starts on page 266 with his concept of "Landscapitos," thumbnail landscapes that are fun and fast to add habitat references to your other plant and animal drawings on the page. Rocks. Mountains. Water. Waves. Sky. Clouds. Sunsets. It's all here.

I highly recommend this book!

Who would want this book? Those wanting a closer intimacy with nature, whether already active nature observers or not. Those artistically inclined, wanting to depict the natural world more realistically. Those wishing to receive basic art instruction in nature drawing. Parents of home-schoolers. Grandparents wanting to share art and nature activities with their grandchildren.

Will I keep up this life-changing nature journaling that I have begun? I think so. I hope so. And if I do, I'll have Jack Laws to thank.

Want to explore the Nature Journal idea further? Mr. Laws has a website with blog posts, including many videos of classes he has taught. Nearly everything in the book is in one of these tutorials or videos, but new blog posts and videos are being added constantly. Check it out: http://johnmuirlaws.com

A Pair of Book Reviews: Woodpeckers

Peterson Reference Guide to Woodpeckers of North America. Stephen A. Shunk. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Boston. 2016.

Woodpeckers of the World: A Photographic Guide. Gerard Gorman. Firefly Books. Buffalo, New York. 2014.
[Also the same as Woodpeckers of the World: A Complete Guide. Gerard Gorman. Bloomsbury. London. 2014.]


Steve Shunk is a personal friend of mine. He lives in Sisters, Oregon among the huge ponderosa pines in the middle of the "Woodpecker Wonderland," where he leads tours locally and throughout the world. He has a very engaging and enthusiastic personality. I knew he'd be the perfect author for this subject. When I heard it was ready to be printed, I pre-ordered my copy.

Thus it is that this new Peterson Reference Guide to Woodpeckers of North America is chocked full of very informative material presented in a very conversational style. I especially enjoyed the introduction--40 pages of facts, figures, and photos on the amazing anatomy, behavior, and conservation of North American woodpeckers.

Then comes the species accounts. Shunk covers 23 woodpecker species found north of Mexico in great detail. Each account starts with a delightfully intimate and friendly 3 or 4 paragraph introduction to the bird--perhaps its initial discovery, former abundance, or a unique aspect of its biology.

Major headings in each account are Distribution (including maps), Habitat, Detection, Visual Identification, Behavior, and Conservation. Plumages and molts, subspecies (including those found outside North America), courtship, parenting, and foraging behaviors are some of the subtopics under the main headings. Each account then concludes with a list of references that one can cross-reference to the extensive bibliography.

The book ends with acknowledgements; several appendices with tabular data of physical measurements, nest site data, etc.; a glossary, that bibliography I mentioned, and an index.

This 308-page book is brimming with photos--not just identification photos of adult birds, but nests and nestlings, habitats, and interesting behaviors.

This book is thoroughly researched and well-planned and executed. It is a joy to read. I think it will become a true reference work and be popular for the everyday reader, as well.

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Now we switch gears to Gerard Gorman's Woodpeckers of the World: A Photographic Guide. Gorman, a world renowned woodpecker expert, covers all of the world's wrynecks, piculets, and woodpeckers--239 species--in 528 pages. Thus, compared to Shunk's work, Gorman has only 1/5th a much room to devote to each species.

In order to accomplish this feat, Gorman's text is necessarily brief, almost telegraphic in places. There are nearly as many photos per species, but they are 1/2, 1/4, 1/6th page, rather than full and 2/3rds page in Shunk's book. The 22-page introduction covers pretty much the same material as Shunk's first 40 pages, but is less conversational, it's more a concise listing of the facts.

Species accounts headings are Identification, Vocalisations, Drumming, Status, Habitat, Range (including a map), Taxonomy and variation, Similar species, and Food and foraging. Much of the behavioral section so emphasized in Shunk is absent in Gorman, including breeding biology, courtship, parenting, and territory defense. Other topics that had to be left out include plumages and molts, conservation, and population changes.

It's hard not to compare the two books directly, but Shunk's work is a reference guide to well-studied species, while Gorman's is a photographic guide that includes 10 times as many species, many of which are rare or poorly-known. Indeed, there are a few species in the book that are so poorly known that there are no photos.

One appreciated addition to Gorman's work is an introduction and overview to each new genus of woodpecker. This primarily discusses taxonomy, which helps in the understanding of how the many species are grouped together and are different from other groups.

This book is also well-researched and ends with an extensive bibliography.

The variety of woodpeckers and their kin in the world is truly amazing. Mr. Gorman gives us a glimpse into that diversity. Blond-crested Woodpecker. Is that not the most magnificent bird? Wait! Maybe it's the Red-necked Woodpecker....

Both of these books have something wonderful to offer those specially intrigued by this marvelous group of fascinating birds.

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If you wish to view or purchase these books from Amazon and give me a few cents off my next book purchases, here are the links:

Peterson Reference Guide to Woodpeckers of North America

Woodpeckers of the World: A Photographic Guide

Book Review: Better Birding

Princeton University Press sent me this new bird book to review. I am very interested in teaching others to improve their field birding skills. So naturally, I was anticipating this new offering.

Better Birding: tips, tools & concepts for the field. George L. Armistead and Brian L. Sullivan. Publication date December 8, 2015. Paperback 360 pages. 8.5 x 5.5 inches.

The first thing I had to do when reading this book is to adjust my preconceptions. You see, based on the title, I was expecting the entire book to be a "how to" manual, similar to Alderfer and Dunn's National Geographic Birding Essentials (2007). In fact, it is a guide for explaining tricky identification problems in North American birds using more than just plumage. It is thus more similar to Kaufman's Field Guide to Advanced Birding (2011). In this regard the book does not disappoint.

The 18-page introduction describes the design of the book with the catch-phrase "Wide-Angle Birding." Bird identification is not just plumage. Birds are not just field marks; they are living entities. Behavior, habitat, natural history, and taxonomy helps separate one species from another.

"You learn more when you can also zoom out and see the big picture--see the bird in context. Sometimes you have to lower your binoculars and step away from the scope, look at your surroundings and habitat the bird is in, consider the conditions, and use your ears. Relying too much on the view through your optics can actually hinder your attempts at identification."

So, then, rather than telling how to better identify birds, the rest of the book is dedicated to showing how to identify individual species from among groups of North American birds. For instance, the first "chapter" covers the 5 loon species. Each age group and gender is covered--from the easy breeding-plumaged adults to the more difficult juveniles and immatures. This "Loon" section has 18 pages that is divided into about 6 pages of text and 12 pages of photos (44 different loon photos of all species and ages). A bit of natural history is given as an overview to all loons, then each species account covers identification individually by age class.

The book continues with 23 more groups that prove to be an identification challenge, such as White Herons, Tropical Terns, Godwits, Small Wrens, Swifts, Yellow-bellied Kingbirds, Pipits, and Cowbirds. The book contains hundreds of color bird photos and collages. The groups were chosen for 3 reasons as Armistead and Sullivan explain. The group represented an opportunity to build core birding skills. The group could use a refreshed identification treatment. The group was interesting to the authors.

Each new group has a "Focus on" sentence telling you what to look for when identifying the bird. It could be voice, range, habitat, or perhaps structure of bill or body. It tells you what plumage features to concentrate on for each group, whether head, rump, or wing pattern. This then leads you into a "Hints and Considerations" section that uses bullet points to specifically apply the "Focus on" point to individual species. The "Identification" section further refines identification techniques for the group before covering each species individually.

In July I reviewed Birding by Impression: A different approach to knowing and identifying birds by Karlson and Rosselet (2015, Review here). The ideas are similar. Both volumes stress 'holistic' birding--the bird in its living context, not just field marks on a page. These volumes complement each other nicely, I think.

Book Review: Birding by Impression

Birding by Impression: A different approach to knowing and identifying birds. Kevin T. Karlson and Dale Rosselet. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Boston/New York. 2015. Hardcover. 286 pages.

There are many field usable clues to a bird's identity other than the patternistic "field marks" put forward by Roger Tory Peterson in 1934. Thus, this new entry in the Peterson Field Guide series, Birding by Impression tackles bird identification using size, shape, behavior, and then adding plumage patterns and general colors, as well has habitat and finally vocalizations.

Rather than covering all North American species, this book covers groups of bird orders, up to perching birds, then covers the various family groups in the passerine order. In each of these chapters some specific identification problem is solved using Birding by Impression (BBI).

One fun learning tool is the inclusion of 219 photo quizzes. Wonderful!

Having trouble separating juvenile Black-bellied Plover, American Golden-Plover and Pacific Golden-Plover? It's there on page 96-98, following the general Plovers information. Do you understand the concept? Turn to the appendix for the photo quiz answer to Figure 89.

This is an informative book. And if one really puts in the study, there is much to be learned here. For instance, I learned that the crown of Rusty Blackbird is more rounded than Brewer's Blackbird.

Vocalizations are first on my list of how I both notice and then identify birds. However, it is included last in this book. The statement that "duck vocalizations rarely play a role in the ID process" is simply not true for puddle ducks. Mallard, gadwall, pintail, wigeon, shoveler, Green-winged Teal, Wood Duck all have unique calls that give them away as they fly overhead in the morning fog or sound off from their concealment in the marsh. Visit any hunting store and find duck calls for each of these.

Flying is the defining means of locomotion for most birds. We see more birds in flight than sitting still. Yet many birders have not been taught to identify birds in flight. So the nearly complete lack of flight style information (except for storm-petrels) was just sad. The description of the difference between crows and ravens in flight was right on. But there was really nothing on the differences between swallows in flight that help make their high-in-the-sky animated silhouettes instantly recognizable to species. And nothing on the distinctive flight styles of the different sparrows as they flush away from you off the road edge. Not only were descriptions of flight style lacking, but there were no instructions or terminology. It's as if the authors think that birds cannot be identified in flight.

In many ways, this book is preceded by the works of Kaufman's Field Guide to Advanced Birding (2011) (size and shape, habitat, behavior), Dunne's Essential Field Guide Companion (2006) (habitat, behavior, flight, vocalizations), and Alderfer and Dunn's Birding Essentials (2007) (size, structure, shape, plumage pattern and color, behavior, flight, typical movements, feeding behavior, voice).

The Stokes Field Guide to the Birds of North America (2010) uses to good effect shape perched and shape in flight, as well as plumage, habitat, and voice. This under-appreciated work gives one a good idea of what is possible in a field guide that uses Birding by Impression in combination with traditional plumage descriptions.

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I have thought quite a bit about the technique or methodology that I personally use to identify birds. First and foremost I locate and identify more than half the birds I encounter by voice (exceptions being seabirds, gulls, diving ducks, and distant shorebirds and raptors) Then I observe shape. Thirdly, I use flight style to identify flying birds before using any plumage characters. I guess its time to organize all my notes and finally create that "how to" manual for identifying birds in flight.

	Birding by Impression	Greg's methodology
1	Size	Vocalizations and other sounds
2	Shape	Shape
3	Behavior	Flight style
4	Plumage patterns and colors	Size
5	Habitat	Behavior
6	Vocalizations	Habitat
7		Plumage patterns and colors
8		Status and distribution

Review: The Scarlet Kingfisher

The Scarlet Kingfisher: Discovery of a new species
August 2014
Robert Henry Benson

Genre: Fiction ("Birder murder mystery"?)

When Mr. Benson asked me to review his new novel I did let him know that I had never reviewed a fictional book before. In fact, I remember reading only two fictional books in the past 25 years--both science fiction. Now, wait; the protagonist in "The Scarlet Kingfisher" is a scientist discovering a new species, so this is science fiction, right? No? Well, I'll give it a try anyway. But be forewarned, I called David Sibley's 2014 update to his groundbreaking book on birds "unreadable." But that wasn't the material; it was the microscopic font size.

This fast-paced story is very engaging, and becomes more so as the story reaches its climax. The story begins with the protagonist--a biologist, Dr. Beach O'Neill--locked out of his field research area on a private ranch in southern Texas. Apparently, some ranch hand reported an improbable undescribed bird in southern Texas. Dr. O'Neill sneaks on to the property to reach his study area, but comes upon a dead body! Now he's the prime suspect in the murder! He has to evade the bad guys and the sheriff, repair his relationship with his girlfriend, save his career, and somehow clear his name! And all the while search for the improbable titular bird.

Written by a birder, Mr. Benson takes us on a realistic drive through the south Texas countryside. We see the geography, botany, and birds through his accurate descriptions of what is really there. Likewise, we get a realistic glimpse into academia, in this case Texas A&M University. There is also some history of Texas towns and people, but how much is true and how much is fiction? Nevertheless, it made it personally realistic to me, because I would pay the same exact attention to the plants and animals.

The fast-pace of the book necessitated shallow character development of many of the characters. I found the antagonists rather stereotyped and lacking in character development. The falconer/bird trapper was an unkempt individual with no redeeming qualities. The "muscle" killed without remorse. The bad guy was a shadowy egomaniac. On the other hand, O'Niell's girlfriend botanist and fellow professor at the university was almost "too good." But by the end of the story, as events were reaching a nail-biting and page-turning confrontation, none of that mattered. Good story-telling carried the day.

Though there are sixty-one chapters in the book, there are only 211 pages. Thus, the chapters average less than 3.5 pages each. Personally, I might have increased the descriptive elements of the story even further (landscape, birds and animals, character development). For instance, in places Texas or desert-specific vegetation is named, but not described. I am reminded of the "Ox-Bow Incident" where more than half the book is devoted to a 15 or 20 minute period building the suspense for the quick actions at the end of the book. The painfully long time to get to the action actually increased the tension of dread of what was inexorably coming. The "Scarlet Kingfisher," on the other hand, kept building tension by moving quickly, then just before climax, switching the story line to another character's perspective of the same time period.

There were some brief uncomfortably graphic descriptions in the killing of a couple birds and one man. The bad guys did some swearing. The sex scene... That was a sex scene? Bullfrog? Really?

An engrossing, fast-paced, bird-themed murder mystery adventure. I have never read anything like it before.

Ps. Marlene loved it!

Sibley 2nd Edition Review: Unreadable

Sibley's Second Edition is here! If you can read it.

Imagine a sci-fi movie where an asteroid as big as North America is hurtling toward earth. Our protagonists do everything to deflect the coming cataclysm but, really, there is no stopping it. As the asteroid enters the atmosphere, miracle of miracles, it pops like a soap bubble! Our protagonists party it up because the end of the world has just been avoided.

In a figurative way, this must have happened with the birding field guide printing department at National Geographic earlier this month with the much-anticipated release of the Second Edition of the Sibley Guide to Birds by David Allen Sibley. Why? Isn't this new release printed by Alfred A Knopf just wonderful and indespensible and revolutionary and chocked full of tons of useful information no birder can live without? Won't this new edition just obliterate all competition like the original did when it arrived to forever change birding field guides in 2000?

Maybe. But I can't tell. You see, this book is unreadable. When I say it is "unreadable," I literally mean that the font is too small and too pale for me to make out words on the page. I can only read the bird's name. All the other text is in super-miniature gray font. I'm not only disappointed; I'm angry--I really anticipated reading this book! And I'm not the only one--reviews on Amazon have a high percentage clamoring for a refund of their $40. What irony! A 3 pound book with 600 pages that no one can read because the text is too tiny! Let me repeat that: When I say it is "unreadable," I literally mean that the font is too small and too pale for me to make out words on the page. I can only read the bird's name. All the other text is in super-miniature gray font.
Most books use a font size of 10 or 11. Sibley's original used an 8 point Times font, about the smallest font one would use in a book, but still readable. Even some 6 point fonts pointing out plumage characters on the illustrations were dark and thick and not too difficult to read.

Sibley's new guide uses 8 and 6 point sans serif font in gray, rather than black. Not only that, the ink width of the font is thinner than normal Arial or other sans serif fonts. I printed out a sample font for comparison.

So, since no one over the age of 30 can read the new text without a magnifying glass, how is the artwork? I noticed most of the illustrations are larger than in the first edition. Sibley has moved the text and artwork right to the edge of the page, gaining some valuable page real estate for larger illustrations. Even so, not all illustrations are larger. Shearwater illustrations are actually smaller than the original edition.

If the first edition Sibley was too red and washed out, this second edition is too dark and saturated. What should be orange (Red-shouldered Hawk) is a muddy brown. The lime-colored Orange-crowned Warblers are ghastly. The dried-blood colored Scarlet Tanager needs to come out from the dark cave it must be in. The storm-petrels are nearly silhouettes. Sure, sometimes in real life we see shadowed birds against harsh light or under the forest canopy, but that's not really how we want it depicted in our favorite field guides. But you know what? I can get used to it. Well, except for the lime jello warblers.

At least everyone agrees that the maps are accurate and improved with the replacement of the green dots with a colored wash as in the Eastern and Western local versions of the original edition.

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What are others saying?

Anything Larus just looked at gulls. The conclusion? "for identification purposes, and from a gull enthusiast's perspective, I don't feel the plates in the 2nd edition make gull identification any easier. In fact, in some ways, the average birder may feel the 2nd edition makes gulls appear even more intimidating."

The Drinking Bird seems to like this Second Edition just fine. "In short, the things that Sibley has always done well are emphasized here. There is no field guide illustrator in North America better able to capture the subtleties of bird identification, the shape and feel of a bird, than David Sibley."

A DC Birding Blog had mostly positive things to say, especially about some of the new sidebars, like the sidebar "Owling" that explains how to find (and not disturb) owls. "Features that I liked best about the original Sibley Guide are maintained in the second edition."

The review in Nature Travel Network complained about some typos and misspellings that got by the editors. It also shows the lime-colored warblers and unintentional storm-petrel silhouettes. "I think you should wait for a second printing. Although the second edition improves on the first edition in some ways, production problems undermine its utility in important areas."

Birdchick likes the new book, but is waiting for the digital app. She notes the small text size and dark illustrations and has this recommendation: "I think this is a guide best purchased in person so you can see if this printing bothers you."

10,000 Birds didn't do a full review, but had a fairly glowing review: "Overall, the second edition is superior to the first edition. The layout is better, the images are bigger, more birds are included, space is used more wisely, there is lots more information, and the book is only four ounces heavier and about the same size. The only real negative is the overly dark printing."

Laura's Birding Blog has this to say: "The deal breaker for me about the new Sibley—the thing that would prevent me from buying it as my primary field guide—has nothing to do with the bird portrayals at all, but with the font size, color, and typeface. For some reason, the book’s designers went with a sans serif font for the main text blocks, even though studies show paragraphs are much easier to read in serif fonts. Even worse, the font is gray rather than black, and too narrow or small for me to read without a magnifying glass." [Hmm... where have I heard that before? -gg]

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OK, now to the nitty-gritty. Seabirds. This group of birds is the least well-done in field guides. How has Sibley done in this new edition compared to the first? And how does he compare to the National Geographic 6th Edition--the first (and up to now only) general field guide to North American birds that portrays seabirds correctly?

First, what species of seabirds have been added to the Second Edition? Yellow-nosed, Black-browed, and Shy albatrosses were added.

Hawaiian and Bermuda petrels are new, as are Great-winged, White-chinned, and Bulwer's petrels. There is a new sidebar "Molt in Seabirds" that explains this important aspect of bird identification. Barolo, Streaked, and Wedge-tailed shearwaters are also new. As for Storm-Petrels, European, Swinhoe's, Wedge-rumped, and Black-bellied are new.

There are no new alcids, but the name is changed for the split of Guadalupe Murrelet ("Southern" Xantus's in the original edition). Sadly, the sidebar on "Identification of Murres" in the original no longer appears in the Second Edition.

By my count that's a very welcomed 15 added seabird species! Of course, the National Geographic 6th Edition (2011) already has these 15, plus 9 additional.

More's not better unless the descriptions are accurate. Let's take a look at changes between the two editions.

Short-tailed Albatross has expanded coverage and, although accurate, nowhere does it say that virtually all West Coast records are of all-dark immatures. That's a pretty significant omission, in my opinion.

The new Shy Albatross account is rather brief, with two small ventral illustrations that don't adequately show/explain the differences of the provocative statement: "North American records are of three different subspecies, sometimes considered three species." At least there should be some definite explanation of the White-capped versus dark-headed Salvin's forms. And the dorsal view should be shown to compare with Laysan.

The Second Edition is unchanged for Northern Fulmar illustrations. Missing is the fading of feathers, dark slate to brown, pale gray to yellowish, that gives molting fulmars a kaleidoscope of color patterns that birders see on West Coast fall pelagic trips.

The Flesh-footed Shearwater has been touched up and appears more accurately browner in the Second Edition. Sibley didn't fix the well-publicized flat head in the dorsal view, however.

The Second Edition improves the underwing illustrations of Sooty and Short-tailed shearwaters. The new notation on Sooty Shearwater "palest on primary coverts" shows that the field guide authors finally have these right! Can I take credit?

Despite the overly-dark views, the addition of Chapman's and Townsend's forms of Leach's Storm-Petrel in the Second Edition finally allows me to positively identify a Leach's I photographed in November 2008 with white rump wrapping around to sides of undertail coverts as Townsend's! East Coast pelagic birders will appreciate new plates showing the differences between the Grant's and Madeiran forms of Band-rumped Storm-Petrel.

Here's another thing I'll take credit for in the Second Edition--tails of fleeing alcids! Sibley includes thumbnails of all the alcids flying away now! His was the first field guide to show all birds in flight--even perching birds. But until now, there were no field guides showing murrelets and auklets as they are usually seen on a pelagic trip--flying directly away from the boat!

How does the seabird section now compare with the National Geographic 6th Edition? Even with the addition of 15 species to Sibley's Second Edition, NatGeo still has 9 more seabird species depicted. When comparing artwork between NatGeo and Sibley it is important to realize that Sibley is a disciple of Roger Tory Peterson in that he uses a patternistic approach. The NatGeo uses several artists, but most seabirds are painted by Jonathan Alderfer and are more detailed, down to the feathers. I, personally, like the more detailed artwork of Alderfer but, as many have noted, Sibley has a great eye for getting the shape right. Where the NatGeo and Sibley show the same species, Sibley often has 5-8 illustrations of each species and NatGeo typically 2-4.

Specifically? National Geographic 6th Edition is better for illustrations of Shy Albatross and Storm-Petrels in general. Sibley's Second Edition is better for Short-tailed Albatross, Black-capped Petrel, Herald Petrel, Great Shearwater, Buller's Shearwater, Short-tailed and Sooty Shearwaters. NatGeo has more detailed illustrations, but Sibley has more illustrations period--especially of seabirds sitting on the water and the new alcids flying away depictions. NatGeo still depicts 9 species of seabirds not shown in Sibley.

National Geographic 6th Edition versus Sibley's original for seabirds? NatGeo, hands down, not any question. Versus Sibley's Second Edition for seabirds? Hmm... probably Sibley's.

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OK, here's my final analysis. The saturated illustrations are a bit dark for some species, but very striking for others. The typeface is too small and pale--it is unreadable. If you use a magnifying glass, the text is there, so if you really work at it you can read individual accounts. The layout is improved; new artwork is added; some older artwork is reworked. The amount of text has probably doubled, including new material on population, habits, and habitats. I'd like to see a reprint with heavier text, perhaps in larger font, and I'd like to see just a bit lighter coloration on the artwork (more yellow?)--though I can get used to it--in all but a few cases.

Realistically, though, until a new printing is released (if ever) this Sibley is going to sit on my shelf mostly unread. It's a shame, really. It's a great book (what I can read of it) but the printing choices and issues ultimately make it unreadable--unusable--and a wasted purchase for me.