Weird omission in Sibley (1 Viewer)

So I'm in California on a wee trip, and I pick up a second-hand copy of the Sibley Western North America field guide in a bookshop in Berkeley (along with a bunch of other natural history guides) before heading down the coast today and stopping off at Point Lobos State Reserve. Amongst other things I see lots of cormorants on the rocks with really obvious blue throat patches. Wow, nice! The British cormorants I am familiar with only ever have white throat patches. Blue is much better and very cool. Weirdly, however, I can't find any cormorants described in the guide that have blue throat patches...

I ask the ranger and he tells me that these are Brandt's cormorants. The Sibley book doesn't mention (or illustrate) the blue throat patch at all however, which (at least from my perspective, in the situation I was in) is by far the most obvious feature of these birds, hence my confusion in trying to identify them.

OK, perhaps most sightings of these birds are when they are not in breeding plumage, and perhaps in the Western U.S. any sort of "pale" throat patch is diagnostic of Brandt's cormorant, but you would think that the guide could at least mention this rather obvious feature... Or is there something I am missing?

You’re right, he doesn’t; an odd omission indeed & something he needs to correct in the next edition. I just checked & there’s no mention of the blue patch in the big Sibley either, though it does show (barely) on his head-&-shoulders illustration of the breeding plumage in that work (there is no such illustration, of course, in the western Sibley).

fugl, you are right. No mention but it shows in the illustration.

"Throat patch becomes bright blue in breeding plumage"

... from my 3rd ed National Geographic guide.

I noticed this too. There were lots of breeding birds around the San-Francisco Monterey area when I was there in May.

The summer plumage of White Pelican is not illustrated either. You hardly need it for ID, but it could have been shown on one of the seven pix illustrating the species.

Cheers
Mike

dantheman said:

"Throat patch becomes bright blue in breeding plumage"

... from my 3rd ed National Geographic guide.

Click to expand...

There's a distinct drawing in the Nat. Geo book depicting this as well.

The Smithsonian Guide also describes the blue coloration around the throat and sides of the face.

I can't speak for the Sibley, since I don't own one, but the Nat. Geo book never fails me in the field.

Sibley omits breeding plumage depictions of all the cormorant species in the compact western regional guide. Presumably because they are the easiest to identify. As already mentioned, the breeding plumage of Brandt's is depicted in the big Sibley. He can't put everything in his big guide into the compact guide and still have it be compact. But I agree it would be nice if a depiction of this feature had been included in the regional version as well.

The big Sibley has 100s if not 1000s of depictions not found in Nat Geo, and the latter would certainly let you down if you needed those depictions. E.g. depictions of swimming tubenoses, hummingbirds as they appear when gorgets do not reflect color, flying passerines, etc. etc.

Jim

J. Moore said:

The big Sibley has 100s if not 1000s of depictions not found in Nat Geo, and the latter would certainly let you down if you needed those depictions. E.g. depictions of swimming tubenoses, hummingbirds as they appear when gorgets do not reflect color, flying passerines, etc. etc.

Jim

Click to expand...

are you taking the Big Sibley out in the field with you?