Greetings,
I am a new birding enthusiast. I have been studying several different bird ID field guides borrowed from my local library trying to decide which one to settle on and purchase.
Recently I have been studying the range maps between the different field guides and notice that they all essentially show and say the same thing just in a different way.
Picking one bird species to compare between all the guides, I picked the Purple Martin. I looked in the 6th edition Peterson field guide and saw the range of the Purple Martin showing it over mostly the eastern half of the U.S. with a few scattered areas in the west on the range map. The range is color coded in pink, which, when I checked the map key, said, that pink means "summer range". However this is confusing me because, the Purple Martin is as much a "spring" bird as a summer bird, if not, more so. In my area, the Purple Martin returns to nest in mid to late March which is still winter time for crying out loud. So why is a field guide saying it is a "summer range" species? If the Purple Martin is back in the U.S. in late winter, why doesn't it show that as well? What about the distribution in spring? Why doesn't it show that as well?
I also noticed that all the other field guides show the Purple Martin as a "summer range" species too.
Thanks for any help
I am a new birding enthusiast. I have been studying several different bird ID field guides borrowed from my local library trying to decide which one to settle on and purchase.
Recently I have been studying the range maps between the different field guides and notice that they all essentially show and say the same thing just in a different way.
Picking one bird species to compare between all the guides, I picked the Purple Martin. I looked in the 6th edition Peterson field guide and saw the range of the Purple Martin showing it over mostly the eastern half of the U.S. with a few scattered areas in the west on the range map. The range is color coded in pink, which, when I checked the map key, said, that pink means "summer range". However this is confusing me because, the Purple Martin is as much a "spring" bird as a summer bird, if not, more so. In my area, the Purple Martin returns to nest in mid to late March which is still winter time for crying out loud. So why is a field guide saying it is a "summer range" species? If the Purple Martin is back in the U.S. in late winter, why doesn't it show that as well? What about the distribution in spring? Why doesn't it show that as well?
I also noticed that all the other field guides show the Purple Martin as a "summer range" species too.
Thanks for any help
