curcyandmartis
Marcy
I am new to birding and realize that I abysmally ignorant about birds' life cycles, general habits, general behaviors, etc. Are there reference books that forum members have found particularly valuable in this respect?
-
Welcome to BirdForum, the internet's largest birding community with thousands of members from all over the world. The forums are dedicated to wild birds, birding, binoculars and equipment and all that goes with it.
Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.
Reference books on bird behavior, etc. (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter curcyandmartis
- Start date
"The Sibley Guide to Bird Life & Behavior" is an excellent book for what you are talking about. It starts off with about 120 pages on bird life and behavior in general, then has about 460 pages about the specifics for various North American bird families such as finches, herons & bitterns, thrushes, etc.
For basically one page descriptions of habitat, feeding, nesting and migration for each individual species, Kenn Kaufman's "Lives of North American Birds" is very nice to have.
For basically one page descriptions of habitat, feeding, nesting and migration for each individual species, Kenn Kaufman's "Lives of North American Birds" is very nice to have.
Qrystal
Fledgeling
What an intriguing topic; I've been wondering about bird behaviour myself lately. It sounds like I want both of the above-mentioned books, but I am wondering which one would be better to have FIRST. I have a few questions about the books..
About the Sibley guide: is bird behaviour similar enough throughout a family that the guide actually covers a lot of the behaviour we'd typically see? is it set up well enough to be used as a reference?
About the Kaufman guide: what is it missing that the other book does well? what does it have that the other book doesn't?
I'll be reading reviews of the books on my own, and perhaps report back with some dirt on them, but I especially respect the opinions of the members of birdforum .. so thanks in advance for any additional info you can provide to help with the decision
About the Sibley guide: is bird behaviour similar enough throughout a family that the guide actually covers a lot of the behaviour we'd typically see? is it set up well enough to be used as a reference?
About the Kaufman guide: what is it missing that the other book does well? what does it have that the other book doesn't?
I'll be reading reviews of the books on my own, and perhaps report back with some dirt on them, but I especially respect the opinions of the members of birdforum .. so thanks in advance for any additional info you can provide to help with the decision
crispycreme
Well-known member
I have both books, and can offer kudos and criticisms for each..
Kaufman's book, "Lives of North American Birds", while dealing with each bird species in particular, is the less effective of the two, in my opinion. For example, when discussing eating habits, the book almost invariably states, "eats insects with some seeds or fruits" (switching the order around from time to time depending on the bird). Well, that's the food of choice for 90% of birds, and seems a waste of space to repeat that nearly 700 times. They could've used that space to find something more unique about that particular bird. The problem is, this book was originally published as computer software (before eBooks became vogue), and when porting over to book form it brought over much redundant data. Still, it's really the only book of its type available for North America - unless you want the 18,000 page Birds of North American published by Cornell and the AOU, for $2000.00 (I wish!) - so it's worth having for that alone. But I find myself referring to it less and less as time goes on. It doesn't really give me anything that I can't get from Cornell's online field guide (which is 10 years more up to date).
Sibley's "Guide to Bird Life and Behavior" on the other hand, seems to understand the limitation of a bound published book, and does an excellent job of printing pertinent facts and useful information. It's much more of an introduction to ornithology course, spending the first 100 or so pages on birds in general, covering basics like anatomy, behavior, habitat and conservation, and then going into more details about each North American bird family in the subsequent chapters (each bird family has its own chapter). Of course, as has been noted, since they don't get down to the species level, they can only cover characteristics that apply to the whole family in question, but since there are many things that make each family unique from other families, there is still plenty to cover. And they do take the opportunity to talk about the unusual instances that separate one species from the rest of its family, so it's not just family-level discussions.
Kaufman's book, "Lives of North American Birds", while dealing with each bird species in particular, is the less effective of the two, in my opinion. For example, when discussing eating habits, the book almost invariably states, "eats insects with some seeds or fruits" (switching the order around from time to time depending on the bird). Well, that's the food of choice for 90% of birds, and seems a waste of space to repeat that nearly 700 times. They could've used that space to find something more unique about that particular bird. The problem is, this book was originally published as computer software (before eBooks became vogue), and when porting over to book form it brought over much redundant data. Still, it's really the only book of its type available for North America - unless you want the 18,000 page Birds of North American published by Cornell and the AOU, for $2000.00 (I wish!) - so it's worth having for that alone. But I find myself referring to it less and less as time goes on. It doesn't really give me anything that I can't get from Cornell's online field guide (which is 10 years more up to date).
Sibley's "Guide to Bird Life and Behavior" on the other hand, seems to understand the limitation of a bound published book, and does an excellent job of printing pertinent facts and useful information. It's much more of an introduction to ornithology course, spending the first 100 or so pages on birds in general, covering basics like anatomy, behavior, habitat and conservation, and then going into more details about each North American bird family in the subsequent chapters (each bird family has its own chapter). Of course, as has been noted, since they don't get down to the species level, they can only cover characteristics that apply to the whole family in question, but since there are many things that make each family unique from other families, there is still plenty to cover. And they do take the opportunity to talk about the unusual instances that separate one species from the rest of its family, so it's not just family-level discussions.
Last edited:
"Animal Behavior" by John Alcock is a very readable textbook on animal behaviour, and a fair proportion of it is devoted to bird behaviour (I bought it because it was a reference from the textbook for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology course). There's some stuff on nerve cells and so on, but the bulk of it is describing different behaviours and the observations and experiments people have made to work out how and why this behaviour evolved: why animals with this behaviour had more descendants than those without it. Flipping through it, I see for example a graph with the legend:
"Song repertoire of the father and off-spring survival are correlated in the great read warbler. The larger a male's song repertoire, the greater his lifetime reproduction success, as measured by offspring that survive to the age of reproduction".
"Song repertoire of the father and off-spring survival are correlated in the great read warbler. The larger a male's song repertoire, the greater his lifetime reproduction success, as measured by offspring that survive to the age of reproduction".
