Greetings everyone! We just returned from a quick birding trip in Iowa over the Easter break. Nothing new from a bird species perspective, but think there are a few wall hangers so it was likely a productive outing. Been caught up in a number of projects as of late not to mention putting the final training runs in before the start of the race season scheduled for next weekend. As a result, going with a short post tonight – my body needs a rest from all the hiking.

Today’s featured topic is another book recollection – Sibley’s Birding Basics by David Allen Sibley. If you are familiar with birds at all you should recognize the author’s name. If not, you need to make your way to your local bookstore and pick up his Guide to Birds – it is an illustrated book which is a nice compliment to the references with actual photographs – you can always draw key features better than you can visualize them from an actual photograph (we’ll just gloss over the nuances of how he was able to draw them so well). This particular book was actually loaned to me by my brother Ron. He probably didn’t realize at the time it would take like a year for me to get through it (sorry). The interesting thing about this book is it isn’t a very large book. Not only is it thin (maybe a 1/4 inch), but it is also small in dimension. Don’t be fooled though, this is a very technical read and one you might find yourself repeating paragraphs just to understand the nuance or detail. It is a very sharp looking published product with gorgeous illustrations, but one thing turned out to be a tad annoying – the type font is too small. One of the reasons it took so long to read is it wasn’t convenient to travel with since it required me to drag along a pair of reading glasses or have really good light. Basically it became my quick nightstand reading material for those days I wasn’t too exhausted to get a few pages in.

From a summary perspective, this book is pretty technical. Recommend just focusing on a few key elements you can use in the field immediately – there is a lot of stuff in there and you might find yourself overwhelmed like I was was at the beginning. For me, the key characteristics that distinguish the Hairy Woodpecker from the Downy Woodpecker was worth the price of admission alone – distinguishing those two in the field is about as fun as trying to identify juvenile Sparrows. Without having them side by side to see the stature differences, they pretty both looked identical until reading the key tail barring difference and the fine feathers on the bridge of the Downy give it a smaller bill appearance. I recommend giving this book a read – maybe a number of reads taking a few more bits of knowledge each time to increase your bird brain.

Hit the jump to read some of the takeaways from my first read!

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