At the main entrance of the Northwestern University Library, where I often work, there is a glass display case that holds a double-elephant folio of Audubon’s 1838 masterpiece, “Birds of America.” A double-elephant folio is a very large book. Each page is about 2 feet across and a yard high. It is daunting to imagine riffling through this volume, searching for the small but crucial differences that would help you decide if that was a white-breasted vireo or a dark-eyed junco you had just seen in the garden. Despite Audubon’s stature as the father of American birding, this is not a handy reference to take along on a walk.
The current library of bird books has shrunk in size but grown in number. There are now more than 1,000 books in print on birds and bird-watching. From the snows of the Arctic Circle to the clove-scented shores of Zanzibar, every place on Earth seems to have its own field guide to the local feathered population. For well-settled regions, multiple texts compete for our devotion. In Chicago, for example, individual birders may prefer the “National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America,” which includes range maps on the same page as the illustrations, or “Stokes Field Guide to Birds,” which uses photographs instead of drawings. They may like the “Peterson Field Guide: Eastern Birds,” which provides the sense of touching the hand that touched the hand of the legendary Roger Tory Peterson himself, or “Birds of Chicago,” which is limited but at least prevents the humiliation of insisting you just saw a bird that never has been and never will be sighted within a thousand miles of Clark Street Beach.
Within their various formats, all the books are pretty much alike. Each provides names and pictures of individual birds, descriptions of migration patterns, habitats, songs, distinguishing marks of beaks, breast bands, coverts and wings, and cautionary comparisons with other birds that might seem identical if one hadn’t been alerted to, for example, the diagnostic yellow spot above the eye.
These are the details that matter if you intend to be a serious birder. Birders are not to be confused with bird watchers, dabblers so casual about their interest they don’t even mind that insulting name. Birders are not casual about anything, and least of all about knowing precisely what it is they are seeing at any moment. They need to be sure that little brown thing is a chipping sparrow and not a tree sparrow (hint: the chipping sparrow is the one with the black eye line). They require a quick reminder of which garwit can be spotted in Minnesota in December (the marbled), and which never makes it east of Alaska (the bar-tailed). More important, they want to be prepared with ready reference should any hitherto unseen bird fly into view.
When this happens, birders stare intently at the stranger, memorizing telltale features of eye and wing, and then sprint to their favorite field guide to determine the precise name of the bird in question. If they cannot identify it and, with any luck, add it to their life list, it might as well not exist. A life list, as its name implies, is your own personal list of every bird you have seen in your life. If this seems like a bizarre document, you are not a birder.
Among the embarrassing number of field guides I own, the one I return to is “Birds of North America,” one of the oldest and still cheapest of the contemporary guides. Although its illustrations are inferior and its range maps sometimes out of date, I am fond of this book for several reasons. It is the only field guide that provides musical staffs for identifying song birds, and if I ever learn to sight read I expect this to be a useful feature. It bears the imprint of the indefatigable Herbert S. Zim, who wrote more than 100 other guides to science and nature, all the way back to the 1942 “Mice, Men, and Elephants: A Book About Mammals,” which sounds enticing but is, lamentably, out of print. Mostly, though, what I like about “Birds of North America” is its attitude.
Its authors do not tolerate false pride. Every bird I have ever looked up there has had the word “common” right after its name, often prefaced by the word “very.” This is no more than the truth. Using a field guide for the birds of the Chicago area is like bringing a personal shopper to The Gap. The items on view are sturdy and attractive, but they hardly present an overwhelming confusion of choice.
Why, then, do I buy these books? The answer, I fear, is a secret imperialism only faintly hidden behind the eco-friendly exterior now in fashion. And I am not alone. As the spring migrations begin, birders should pause in their quest to verify the precise name of each confusing female warbler and consider what it is they seek. Is it a reverent understanding of that feathered creature flitting through the hedge, or is it a lust toward acquisition? Like a modern-day cabinet of curiosities, the field guide gives us nature under control, sorted by size, color and location, and quite literally in our pocket. It allows us to hold an inventory of experience, complete with personal checklist as an appendix in the back, that assures us we can in some way own the natural world. Of course we can’t, but that comfortable delusion is surely at least part of the attraction of such a book.
Perhaps it always was. Some of the birds Audubon portrayed are now extinct. Others have prospered and multiplied until they are, in fact, very common. But in the 1820s and 1830s, when Audubon was selling subscriptions to the wealthy merchants of Manchester and the aristocrats of London and Paris, every bird he drew on those gigantic pages was as rare and strange as the volume as a whole. To Aubudon’s patrons, the New World was still essentially uncharted, its markets uncertain and its woods unknown. It must have been satisfying to possess in so conspicuous a way the birds of America.
