In 2002, I scored the plum of my career when Pete Dunne agreed to be interviewed for my film, “Opposable Chums: Guts & Glory at The World Series of Birding.” Pete is, of course, not only one of the country’s most famous birders, but he’s also the best-selling author of a dozen great birding books.
Oh, yeah: and he’s the founder of The World Series of Birding. I’d long been a fan.
At the conclusion of the interview, we were chatting as the equipment got packed up, when Pete said something that struck me as, well,
odd.
He mentioned an idea he had of a birding guide with no illustrations.
The first words that ran through my head were, “Is he out of his cotton-pickin’…”
But before I could even finish the thought, I remembered something that happened to me once:
As a nascent birder a decade before, I was traveling south along the east coast on a birding holiday, when I became convinced that some of the vultures I was seeing kettling overhead were not the Turkey Vultures I was used to, but were Black Vultures, lifers I’d never seen. Frustrated, I just couldn’t yet tell the difference. The field guide illustrations were great if you were sitting twenty feet away from a proudly posing bird, but these birds were silhouetted a half mile above.
So that night, in my dingy room at the On-Ramp Motel, I consulted one of the many books I’d brought along on my safari, “Hawk Watch: A Guide for Beginners,” by Pete, with Debbie Keller and Rene Kochenberger.
The next morning, having memorized some of the field marks of Black Vultures as described, I hit the road and soon found myself staring up into a kettle of Vultures.
Yup: “very squat, broadly fanned tail…holds its wings flat or with a slight dihedral.” And the underwing markings confirmed it. My first Black Vulture.
Now, “Hawk Watch” is indeed illustrated, very well, in fact, by the great artist and bird identification expert David Sibley. But it was those two phrases, which I’d read the night before, that put the bird in my pocket.
So, I reasoned ten years later as we wrapped up our interview, if anyone could create an illustration-free bird guide, Pete Dunne could.
And he has.
“Pete Dunne’s Essential Field Guide Companion” is a ground-breaking entrant into the justly exalted realm of bird identification guides, a discipline ushered into the modern era by Roger Tory Peterson’s “A Field Guide to The Birds,” and reaching its current pinnacle with the afore-mentioned David Sibley’s state-of-the-art “The Sibley Guide to Birds.” But whereas these two books advanced the field of bird identification chiefly through targeted illustrations, Pete’s book verbally describes each species in terms of geographical status, visual presentation, behavior, flight characteristics, and vocalizations.
In the book, each species description is preceded by a “nickname” designed as a handy mnemonic: the Blue Jay is “The Noisy Coxcomb,” the Magnolia Warbler is “A Bird of Short Phrases,” the American Woodcock is “Meatloaf on a Stick,” etc. He then discusses where the bird can be found and what it looks like, but it’s the paragraphs that detail the bird’s behavior that, for me, offer the most valuable clues to some of the more difficult-to-be really-sure birds.
Yellowlegs, for instance. Remember, I’m a City boy.
Now, I’ve seen hundreds of Yellowlegs in my travels, but I was never sure enough about the distinction between the Greater and the Lesser Yellowlegs. The field guides offer hints such as bill-to-head-size ratios that are subtle and hard to eyeball when the bird can keep its bill buried in the mud for most of the day. And there’s too much overlap in size between the two species for a novice to differentiate one way or another.
It was frustrating. I’d be staring at a gaggle of shorebirds, sure that at least two were lifers, but I was too unclear to claim them as mine.
So, when Pete’s book came out, I headed to the nearest shorebird habitat, having read that the Greater Yellowlegs is, “a more active, angry, and aggressive feeder than the Lesser Yellowlegs. Walks with longer strides, a Tyrannosaurus of a shorebird.” About the Lesser Yellowlegs, Pete had written that, “everything about this bird -- bill, neck, body, legs -- is slender; a shorebird to inspire El Greco.”
Yup. There they were, just as advertised. The difference was now plain, and has been ever since. Two lifers, just like that, after years of frustration.
Thanks, Pete.
“Pete Dunne’s Essential Guide Field Guide Companion” is now a permanent part of my arsenal when I go birding. It stays in the car with the Sibley, of course; neither is designed to carry into the field, a job for which the Peterson still serves admirably.
I see it this way: Peterson shows you what to look for in the field, Sibley shows you what it’ll look like when you get there, and Pete tells you what it’ll be doing.
The three combined give you a true three-dimensional picture of a species appearance in all its plumages, its geographical and habitat preferences, and its behavior. Indeed, quite an arsenal of information, from three of the greatest bird brains the field has ever known.
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