Welcome to Expert Village. My name is Wayne Petersen and I direct the Massachusetts
Audubon Society's Important Bird Areas Program for Massachusetts. Today, we're here at the
Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary in Marshfield, Massachusetts. And, we're going to be talking
about the equipment needed to get one started in birding. Now, a few moments ago, we talked a
little bit about field guides in a general sense. There are other field guides that are far more specific.
So that for individuals who are particularly interested in a group of birds or who want more
information about one or another families of birds, there are guides, for example, to Warblers, which
only features this very large and colorful group of birds. A field guide like this is one that utilizes
both color photographs and paintings to make the point. There are others that are strictly photo
guides. This is one to North American Raptors, where we find high quality photographs combined
with relatively minimal text letting the images stand on their own. A recent guide to Shorebirds has
some very creative elements in it that incorporates birds in very natural situations. The way they're
actually seen in the field, rather than being exclusively high quality bird portraits. So, a book of this
sort is often useful. Some of them can feature, some of the little brown jobs, like Sparrows, for
example, which can be a group of birds that many people find confusing. So, that the photographs in
a book like this can be very useful. And then there are what are called monographs, which basically
address one particular species. And, I deliberately selected the Ivory Billed Woodpecker as one that
has received a lot of acclaim of late since this is a bird that was long thought to be extinct, and now
there's great controversy over whether or not the species may still exist. So, for somebody who
wants a lot of information about one very individual bird, there are lots of books that address single
species such as this on the Ivory Billed Woodpecker.
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