My first guide was Peterson’s Field Guide to Western Birds 2nd edition 1961 which has Hawaiian birds added. It has a checklist and I used different markings in it for where I first observed a bird. I acquired it in Cordova in the early 70’s where I took a wonderful birding class. Now I usually look up birds in Sibley’s, 2001. I enjoy your blog so much! Thank you! Lesley Hillsboro Oregon
When I got done reading your blog, I had to run and look up the date of our field guide (1966)...a year after we were married...not the year we started "noticing" birds as we were dairy farmers in Bellevue MI at that time! We recorded 14 birds we identified while living in St. Paul. Then in Thief River Falls Tarry saw a black-billed cuckoo!...I don't remember him finding that one but won't forget discovering yellow-headed blackbirds galore in a neighbor's field that had become a pond with cat-tails! Tarry's most recent sighting was a Bohemian Waxwing in February of this year!
It's funny how useful the Golden Guide still is! I doubt if nearly as many people use the older editions of the Peterson guide no as do the Golden Guide. Peterson updated his guide to make it all color in the Fourth Edition, laid out like the Golden Guide with illustrations all on one side and text on the other, in 1980. I can imagine people still using that one, but none of the first three editions.
My first guide was Peterson in 1991 as required with the Birder's Handbook in Dr. Daniel Klem, Jr.'s adult ornithology class, "Biology of Birds" at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, my birding and amateur ornithology setting off point. I went everywhere with it in my back and winter coat pocket in the Lehigh Valley, marking it up as I went with additional field notes and drawings. I was so incensed at Fate when I had to discard my coffee-stained, muddied copy for a new one in 2010, transferring what I could minus the unnecessary, I thought, life list AOU numbers to my journal. (I'm not a good bird illustrator. ) My first Golden Guide I gave to my brother and his wife since I had the Peterson to teach their kids. They still have it and, I made sure, a Birder's Handbook. They're all I have now, the kids are grown, and most of them are still in Wisconsin. At their wedding in the North Woods, I went out with the Peterson on an old logging dirt road and found my first and only Gray Jays, Whiskey Jacks, Picnic, and Camp Robbers, riders at the tip of the bows of Thoreau's canoes, now back to be being named their prior name, Canada Jay. They were bathing in the dust of the side of the dirt road in a clump of 20 of them, in a tight 2x2' ball. How these large, 11 1/2 " bundles of mischievous joys, with mischievous, hypnotic smiles managed to compact themselves together I'm not sure. But there they were, out of winter range now there in that southern portion of the Wisconsin North Woods (near the woods' southern border). They are known to be a little social, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not sure that social. Maybe it was the presence of an impression in the road. I was lucky to stumble upon them. I like photos, especially noted with overset arrows, plain, then shopped for light, but prefer plates. They are as the bird is, and easier to use for a correct ID diagnosis.
The range of Canada Jays has been retracting in the south because of climate change: what researchers call "hoard rot" is ruining their winter caches of food thanks to winter thaws that hardly ever happened historically but now are rotting the meat stored during fall and early winter, needed when they start nesting in winter.
My first guide was Peterson’s Field Guide to Western Birds 2nd edition 1961 which has Hawaiian birds added. It has a checklist and I used different markings in it for where I first observed a bird. I acquired it in Cordova in the early 70’s where I took a wonderful birding class. Now I usually look up birds in Sibley’s, 2001. I enjoy your blog so much! Thank you! Lesley Hillsboro Oregon
I love how so many of us marked our field guides up to keep track of the birds we saw, especially for the first time.
When I got done reading your blog, I had to run and look up the date of our field guide (1966)...a year after we were married...not the year we started "noticing" birds as we were dairy farmers in Bellevue MI at that time! We recorded 14 birds we identified while living in St. Paul. Then in Thief River Falls Tarry saw a black-billed cuckoo!...I don't remember him finding that one but won't forget discovering yellow-headed blackbirds galore in a neighbor's field that had become a pond with cat-tails! Tarry's most recent sighting was a Bohemian Waxwing in February of this year!
It's funny how useful the Golden Guide still is! I doubt if nearly as many people use the older editions of the Peterson guide no as do the Golden Guide. Peterson updated his guide to make it all color in the Fourth Edition, laid out like the Golden Guide with illustrations all on one side and text on the other, in 1980. I can imagine people still using that one, but none of the first three editions.
My first guide was Peterson in 1991 as required with the Birder's Handbook in Dr. Daniel Klem, Jr.'s adult ornithology class, "Biology of Birds" at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, my birding and amateur ornithology setting off point. I went everywhere with it in my back and winter coat pocket in the Lehigh Valley, marking it up as I went with additional field notes and drawings. I was so incensed at Fate when I had to discard my coffee-stained, muddied copy for a new one in 2010, transferring what I could minus the unnecessary, I thought, life list AOU numbers to my journal. (I'm not a good bird illustrator. ) My first Golden Guide I gave to my brother and his wife since I had the Peterson to teach their kids. They still have it and, I made sure, a Birder's Handbook. They're all I have now, the kids are grown, and most of them are still in Wisconsin. At their wedding in the North Woods, I went out with the Peterson on an old logging dirt road and found my first and only Gray Jays, Whiskey Jacks, Picnic, and Camp Robbers, riders at the tip of the bows of Thoreau's canoes, now back to be being named their prior name, Canada Jay. They were bathing in the dust of the side of the dirt road in a clump of 20 of them, in a tight 2x2' ball. How these large, 11 1/2 " bundles of mischievous joys, with mischievous, hypnotic smiles managed to compact themselves together I'm not sure. But there they were, out of winter range now there in that southern portion of the Wisconsin North Woods (near the woods' southern border). They are known to be a little social, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not sure that social. Maybe it was the presence of an impression in the road. I was lucky to stumble upon them. I like photos, especially noted with overset arrows, plain, then shopped for light, but prefer plates. They are as the bird is, and easier to use for a correct ID diagnosis.
The range of Canada Jays has been retracting in the south because of climate change: what researchers call "hoard rot" is ruining their winter caches of food thanks to winter thaws that hardly ever happened historically but now are rotting the meat stored during fall and early winter, needed when they start nesting in winter.