Mysticete
Well-known member
So I am really late to finally getting and perusing this book (2 years late it seems), but I did want to throw some comments out.
First...I LOVE that the authors actually included some hypothetical species that had been reported within the region, but were dismissed due to uncertainties over origin. Too often these birds are dismissed out of turn, which results in knowledge of there existence being completely lost, leading to the next bird of that species to be also dismissed. The absence of a "origin hypothetical" section of the ABA list continues to vex me
Of course the illustrations are amazing...plenty of people have said that. The book also covers in great detail the patterns of vagrancy, and I was able to to learn a lot I didn't know about this. And all the little historical notes were great...and really does make you wonder how many rare birds show up and are just never reported.
I have stated before that I find the Howell field guide ordering system clunky. I will say though I liked that they did divide the Old World from the New World strays. However I would have gone a step further, and separated out New World into Caribbean and Mexican/Central American/South American. I would have also just kept all the Old World birds together, and so on and so forth. Mixing and matching by subdividing each category I found to be kind of awkward.
Obviously there is always going to be disagreement about what is and isn't a rare bird. Personally, I think American Flamingo, Tamaulipas Crow, and Brown Jay all would fall under the book's purview, and maybe a future edition can correct this (The latter two certainly have basically had zero or close to zero records in the ABA over the last five years). Can't begrudge them not including all old world forms either...as several examples show within the text, birders tend not to really focus on subspecies ID, and the data would be very poor for actual occurrences.
On a side note, one comment which maybe...is a bit concerning regarding their proposed NA field guide, are the number of incidences they differ in treatment of common names and species level taxonomy from the ABA. I haven't seen these brought up in reviews but I think are worth pointing out. These include recognition of several splits such as Eastern Blue Bunting and Hen Harrier, not currently accepted by the ABA. Buried in the text are suggestions for further differences: Use of Whistling Swan (which suggests a Tundra swan split and renaming not currently recognized), Western (Pacific) Winter Wren, Pacific Slope Spotted Towhee, etc. For this book, I don't think this is all that confusing, since anyone who is going to notice those elements probably is aware of the backstory. But if this represents the tip of the iceberg for the new Howell field guide, there are going to be a lot of confused novice birders and wacky ebirding hijinks if the guide uses names and taxonomy that differ from ABA/AOU/Clements/Ebird/other field guides.
First...I LOVE that the authors actually included some hypothetical species that had been reported within the region, but were dismissed due to uncertainties over origin. Too often these birds are dismissed out of turn, which results in knowledge of there existence being completely lost, leading to the next bird of that species to be also dismissed. The absence of a "origin hypothetical" section of the ABA list continues to vex me
Of course the illustrations are amazing...plenty of people have said that. The book also covers in great detail the patterns of vagrancy, and I was able to to learn a lot I didn't know about this. And all the little historical notes were great...and really does make you wonder how many rare birds show up and are just never reported.
I have stated before that I find the Howell field guide ordering system clunky. I will say though I liked that they did divide the Old World from the New World strays. However I would have gone a step further, and separated out New World into Caribbean and Mexican/Central American/South American. I would have also just kept all the Old World birds together, and so on and so forth. Mixing and matching by subdividing each category I found to be kind of awkward.
Obviously there is always going to be disagreement about what is and isn't a rare bird. Personally, I think American Flamingo, Tamaulipas Crow, and Brown Jay all would fall under the book's purview, and maybe a future edition can correct this (The latter two certainly have basically had zero or close to zero records in the ABA over the last five years). Can't begrudge them not including all old world forms either...as several examples show within the text, birders tend not to really focus on subspecies ID, and the data would be very poor for actual occurrences.
On a side note, one comment which maybe...is a bit concerning regarding their proposed NA field guide, are the number of incidences they differ in treatment of common names and species level taxonomy from the ABA. I haven't seen these brought up in reviews but I think are worth pointing out. These include recognition of several splits such as Eastern Blue Bunting and Hen Harrier, not currently accepted by the ABA. Buried in the text are suggestions for further differences: Use of Whistling Swan (which suggests a Tundra swan split and renaming not currently recognized), Western (Pacific) Winter Wren, Pacific Slope Spotted Towhee, etc. For this book, I don't think this is all that confusing, since anyone who is going to notice those elements probably is aware of the backstory. But if this represents the tip of the iceberg for the new Howell field guide, there are going to be a lot of confused novice birders and wacky ebirding hijinks if the guide uses names and taxonomy that differ from ABA/AOU/Clements/Ebird/other field guides.
