Carson
Well-known member
Of course, there is money as a motive to divide E and W North America. However, Peterson wrote his first field guide without that motive. In fact it was rejected by every publishing house there was, until Houghton Mifflin took a wild chance--and had a sell-out as soon as it was released!
In those days, there were only big manuals (Birds of America was one). Peterson is given credit for having invented the concept of field guides. But he wrote that he was not prepared to tackle western North America.
Because NA was settled by Europeans, generally from East to West, birds were given "default" eastern names, and to this day, western schoolkids may call a Steller's Jay (western) by a more familiar, wrong, eastern name, Blue Jay; or a Rufous Hummingbird (western) by a more familiar, wrong, eastern name, Ruby-throated Hummingbird. There are dozens like that. Growing up in Vancouver, I knew the Toronto names way before I learned the Vancouver names. That is your East TO West influence.
Similarly, we have all sorts of plants called "FALSE This-&-That" because their names had to be modified after the fact.
So, Peterson eventually undertook his western guide project as something quite ambitious indeed. He felt the 100th Meridian was a natural division; I believe it was originally the divide between tall- and short-grass prairie.
He saved a lot of birds' lives. As you know, the Christmas Bird Count replaced the former practice of shooting as many birds on Boxing Day as a person could. Before Peterson's field guides and good binoculars, bird-watching was done with a bag and a gun.
The new generation of no-kill birders were (seriously) deemed a lazy bunch.
As well, Peterson promoted the use of European names to replace every possible "hawk" name, in a time when hawks were routinely killed and hung out to dry on farmers' barbed-wire fences. (I've seen that myself.) Hence, Duck Hawk became Peregrine, Pigeon Hawk became Merlin, and Sparrow Hawk became American Kestrel. At the same time, farmers were told that these birds were as much friend as foe. The idea was to reduce the wanton killing, by at least separating falcons off from those despised birds known as "hawks."
Peterson was not the author of these changes. I am saying he put his influence strongly behind them, at a time when his influence was great.
All of this is interesting reading, and you can read it in his early field guide intros. I also recommend Wild America, by Peterson and his British friend James Fisher. They were such good friends, and they alternated writing the chapters and sub-chapters. Fisher was still quite young when he was killed in a car crash. That devastated Peterson, who lived half-a-lifetime longer; Peterson died just a few years ago, as THE elderly statesman of American bird-watching. You Brits over there might find Wild America (1959??) fascinating; and it features Fishers' droll insights into his very American friend.
Peterson thirdly brought out A Field Guide to the Birds of Texas, which scotch-taped chunks of his E and W guides together. He travelled throughout Texas with James Fisher, and, again, I doubt this Texas guide was primarily a money-motivated scheme. Things were simpler then. I think Peterson thought it was pretty cool to pay homage to this big state, as well as to address the question posed by Michael, above, in this thread.
James Fisher slyly observed that it was a good thing Peterson had written his field guides, because he (Peterson) depended on them a lot! [in Wild America]
Katy, regarding your query, the re-cover of Peterson's FG2WB did not claim to be a new edition. I have the two books here as I write. They are identical, word for word, right down to the ruler on the inside cover. Although on the inside of the new-cover book it says it's the 3rd edition, completely redone, etc, that is indeed what it says in the 3rd edition with the original cover.
-- I was angry with National G because booksellers' parlance is pretty sacred: an edit is not a rewrite; a revision is not a reprint; and (this to Bill Gates) a typeface is not a font. National G had to have been absolutely aware of what they were doing, and it was reprehensible--not just to birders, but within the entire community of the book trade.
-- I have both NGS books too, but I'm looking about me, and I can put my hand on only one of them at the moment. I was warning Beverlybaynes by memory, so anybody might please tell me off if I'm wrong: but I am pretty darned sure you'll find on comparison that the new black-cover NGS guide has no right to call itself a new edition: it is an intentional rip-off.
If any of you ever get a chance to buy an earlier field guide, you may wish to do so. The 1941 FG2WB contains all sorts of subspecies info, which is quite fascinating.
For some very strange reason, which i think is a temporary quirk, Peterson seems to have become suddenly unfashionable, as mentioned by streatham, above.
Definitely the writers of All the Birds of N. A. leave Peterson's name profoundly OUT of their book. All the Birds is quite incomplete; its title is very ironic. I'll just BET they failed to get an endorsement from Peterson; and that might be, as All the Birds changes things for the sake of change. Its sequencing is a nightmare, for example. And rare birds are given teensy insert pics--exactly what you DON'T want when you have something rare in your binoculars. However, the book does contain excellent habitat backgrounds. The arrogance of the work is such that it offers to sell you large-size renditions of its paintings, which are pretty basic insofar as bird illustrations go. I believe All the Birds has been bought out by Collins or another now.
Then there are husband-and-wife Stokes, who are money-makers, but seem dedicated to good work. Unfortunately, they steal from the E guide to make their W; I would have liked to see different photos, the expensive way no doubt.
Peterson was the idealist, and I feel I owe a lot to him. Perhaps he could be faulted on having no enemies--he painted a pretty rosy picture (maybe too much so) of EVERYone. A friend, Sutton, was given credit by the Audubon Society as being a brilliant artist, but Sutton was ruthless: his pictures represented slow death for his subjects, including rare species he painted in Mexico because they were protected in the USA. For example, he draped a rag over the wing of a heron he'd maimed in capture; then boasted about his painting depicting "the fierce look in the eye" of the desperate bird. In the 1970s I wrote a letter about that to the Audubon Society, which promptly wrote back that I owed everything I knew to nice people like Sutton, and I was a disgrace as a Parks Canada naturalist to dare be so thankless.
So, perhaps Peterson kept company with a variety of "types." One of his friends, Guy Griscom (spelling?), was slow to get binoculars--if I remember the story correctly, he may have been poor--and, as a result, became brilliant at bird calls. Remember, there were no tape recordings then.
So, what's in a book, huh? As far as West vs East goes, the combination guides are National G, the Golden Guide I praised earlier, and All the Birds of NA.
The E-W splits are Peterson, Stokes, and Sibley.
There are others too, such as the Smithsonian's cropped-photos-of-stuffed-birds field guide. I just realize now, as I write this, that I bragged earlier: I don't own that one.
Usually I don't carry a field guide. That might give me a certain status, either as being very good or being careless and arrogant and likely to get myself into trouble sooner or later. Well, I do protect myself with a microcassette recorder, so I can record every detail of every feather--except of course the one feather that's diagnostic, which, not having my field guide, I overlook. Oh well.
I always imagined a comfy life of having good friends over to chat by the fire in my den, and my own little conceit would be that, as host, I'd have every possible book at their disposal. I don't have that home yet, nor any money; and I have rather few friends who know anything at all about birds. But, I'm only 57, so perhaps things will turn again, as they have in years gone by.
So pardon the length of this--it's been fun to share these IMHOs with you, as though we were all gathered together in some cozy little den someplace!
In those days, there were only big manuals (Birds of America was one). Peterson is given credit for having invented the concept of field guides. But he wrote that he was not prepared to tackle western North America.
Because NA was settled by Europeans, generally from East to West, birds were given "default" eastern names, and to this day, western schoolkids may call a Steller's Jay (western) by a more familiar, wrong, eastern name, Blue Jay; or a Rufous Hummingbird (western) by a more familiar, wrong, eastern name, Ruby-throated Hummingbird. There are dozens like that. Growing up in Vancouver, I knew the Toronto names way before I learned the Vancouver names. That is your East TO West influence.
Similarly, we have all sorts of plants called "FALSE This-&-That" because their names had to be modified after the fact.
So, Peterson eventually undertook his western guide project as something quite ambitious indeed. He felt the 100th Meridian was a natural division; I believe it was originally the divide between tall- and short-grass prairie.
He saved a lot of birds' lives. As you know, the Christmas Bird Count replaced the former practice of shooting as many birds on Boxing Day as a person could. Before Peterson's field guides and good binoculars, bird-watching was done with a bag and a gun.
The new generation of no-kill birders were (seriously) deemed a lazy bunch.
As well, Peterson promoted the use of European names to replace every possible "hawk" name, in a time when hawks were routinely killed and hung out to dry on farmers' barbed-wire fences. (I've seen that myself.) Hence, Duck Hawk became Peregrine, Pigeon Hawk became Merlin, and Sparrow Hawk became American Kestrel. At the same time, farmers were told that these birds were as much friend as foe. The idea was to reduce the wanton killing, by at least separating falcons off from those despised birds known as "hawks."
Peterson was not the author of these changes. I am saying he put his influence strongly behind them, at a time when his influence was great.
All of this is interesting reading, and you can read it in his early field guide intros. I also recommend Wild America, by Peterson and his British friend James Fisher. They were such good friends, and they alternated writing the chapters and sub-chapters. Fisher was still quite young when he was killed in a car crash. That devastated Peterson, who lived half-a-lifetime longer; Peterson died just a few years ago, as THE elderly statesman of American bird-watching. You Brits over there might find Wild America (1959??) fascinating; and it features Fishers' droll insights into his very American friend.
Peterson thirdly brought out A Field Guide to the Birds of Texas, which scotch-taped chunks of his E and W guides together. He travelled throughout Texas with James Fisher, and, again, I doubt this Texas guide was primarily a money-motivated scheme. Things were simpler then. I think Peterson thought it was pretty cool to pay homage to this big state, as well as to address the question posed by Michael, above, in this thread.
James Fisher slyly observed that it was a good thing Peterson had written his field guides, because he (Peterson) depended on them a lot! [in Wild America]
Katy, regarding your query, the re-cover of Peterson's FG2WB did not claim to be a new edition. I have the two books here as I write. They are identical, word for word, right down to the ruler on the inside cover. Although on the inside of the new-cover book it says it's the 3rd edition, completely redone, etc, that is indeed what it says in the 3rd edition with the original cover.
-- I was angry with National G because booksellers' parlance is pretty sacred: an edit is not a rewrite; a revision is not a reprint; and (this to Bill Gates) a typeface is not a font. National G had to have been absolutely aware of what they were doing, and it was reprehensible--not just to birders, but within the entire community of the book trade.
-- I have both NGS books too, but I'm looking about me, and I can put my hand on only one of them at the moment. I was warning Beverlybaynes by memory, so anybody might please tell me off if I'm wrong: but I am pretty darned sure you'll find on comparison that the new black-cover NGS guide has no right to call itself a new edition: it is an intentional rip-off.
If any of you ever get a chance to buy an earlier field guide, you may wish to do so. The 1941 FG2WB contains all sorts of subspecies info, which is quite fascinating.
For some very strange reason, which i think is a temporary quirk, Peterson seems to have become suddenly unfashionable, as mentioned by streatham, above.
Definitely the writers of All the Birds of N. A. leave Peterson's name profoundly OUT of their book. All the Birds is quite incomplete; its title is very ironic. I'll just BET they failed to get an endorsement from Peterson; and that might be, as All the Birds changes things for the sake of change. Its sequencing is a nightmare, for example. And rare birds are given teensy insert pics--exactly what you DON'T want when you have something rare in your binoculars. However, the book does contain excellent habitat backgrounds. The arrogance of the work is such that it offers to sell you large-size renditions of its paintings, which are pretty basic insofar as bird illustrations go. I believe All the Birds has been bought out by Collins or another now.
Then there are husband-and-wife Stokes, who are money-makers, but seem dedicated to good work. Unfortunately, they steal from the E guide to make their W; I would have liked to see different photos, the expensive way no doubt.
Peterson was the idealist, and I feel I owe a lot to him. Perhaps he could be faulted on having no enemies--he painted a pretty rosy picture (maybe too much so) of EVERYone. A friend, Sutton, was given credit by the Audubon Society as being a brilliant artist, but Sutton was ruthless: his pictures represented slow death for his subjects, including rare species he painted in Mexico because they were protected in the USA. For example, he draped a rag over the wing of a heron he'd maimed in capture; then boasted about his painting depicting "the fierce look in the eye" of the desperate bird. In the 1970s I wrote a letter about that to the Audubon Society, which promptly wrote back that I owed everything I knew to nice people like Sutton, and I was a disgrace as a Parks Canada naturalist to dare be so thankless.
So, perhaps Peterson kept company with a variety of "types." One of his friends, Guy Griscom (spelling?), was slow to get binoculars--if I remember the story correctly, he may have been poor--and, as a result, became brilliant at bird calls. Remember, there were no tape recordings then.
So, what's in a book, huh? As far as West vs East goes, the combination guides are National G, the Golden Guide I praised earlier, and All the Birds of NA.
The E-W splits are Peterson, Stokes, and Sibley.
There are others too, such as the Smithsonian's cropped-photos-of-stuffed-birds field guide. I just realize now, as I write this, that I bragged earlier: I don't own that one.
Usually I don't carry a field guide. That might give me a certain status, either as being very good or being careless and arrogant and likely to get myself into trouble sooner or later. Well, I do protect myself with a microcassette recorder, so I can record every detail of every feather--except of course the one feather that's diagnostic, which, not having my field guide, I overlook. Oh well.
I always imagined a comfy life of having good friends over to chat by the fire in my den, and my own little conceit would be that, as host, I'd have every possible book at their disposal. I don't have that home yet, nor any money; and I have rather few friends who know anything at all about birds. But, I'm only 57, so perhaps things will turn again, as they have in years gone by.
So pardon the length of this--it's been fun to share these IMHOs with you, as though we were all gathered together in some cozy little den someplace!
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