Picking a Bird Watching Field Guide

Video Transcript

" The second tool that you'll need to bird watch is a field guide. There are many field guides out. Field guides for each state, field guides for half of the country, the Eastern Peterson's, the Eastern Fibley's, Coffman's field guide is for the entire country. If you're going to be traveling, maybe one for the entire country would be best. If you're going to spend most of your time looking at birds in your home area, then a field guide for Eastern United States, or Western United States, if you live there, would be best, possibly. Rogar Tory Peterson, one of the world's most prominent birders who past away a few years ago, developed a system of field marks in the field guide, where there are actually little arrows pointing to the specific part of the bird, that helps you identify exactly what that bird is. For me, birding is a process of elimination. I see a bird, is it a grackle? No! Is it a dove? No! I eliminate what it's not, until I'm sure of what it is and I do that by looking at the field guides and reading the information on the different bird families and the information of that specific species of bird."