New field guide is for the (Connecticut) birds
If I see a bird that I don’t recognize, I go to my “Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America,” known simply as Sibley.
I check the “National Geographic Field Guide to Birds of North America.” To make sure, I stop in at the “Peterson Field Guide to Birds of Eastern and Central North America.” (Like Sibley, it’s Peterson. I am on a last-name basis with my field guides.)
Then, ruefully, I conclude: house sparrow.
For birders, checking on field guides — with their illustrations or photographs, with migration maps and cross-references — is part of the pleasure of birding. Seeing the bird is one thing. If you are a bookworm, reading about it doubles the fun.
It keeps you honest. Look at entry for the downy woodpecker, then its considerably larger, but very similar cousin, the hairy woodpecker. Compare and contrast.
A new entry has arrived to help with my search: “The Birding Pro’s Birds of Connecticut” by Marc Parnell.
It’s the latest in more than 40 field guides Parnell has written for states, cities and Canadian provinces. It’s also one with some family ties. His mother, Caron Parnell, lived in Ridgefield for many years and was a backyard birdwatcher.
His book isn’t encyclopedic. Although birders have identified about 430 species in the state over the years, Parnell concentrates on the 126 species people are most likely to see. (It’s hard to spot the Connecticut warbler in Connecticut. Ditto, Bohemian waxwings. Baltimore orioles and Carolina wrens are much easier.)
Each of those birds gets a page of photographs, and a page of information — when and where the bird is mostly likely to be seen, its favored habitat, where it is likely to nest. It has a month-by-month chart for each species, showing migration patterns.
The guide offers feeding tips for birds that show up at backyard smorgasbords. Parnell also has “birding by comparison” features that lets people sort species from one another.
Parnell said the book is intended to be useful across the range of birding expertise.
“It’s about distilling the essential parts,” he said. “It is perfect for novices and intermediate birders.”
It also may help people realize that for a small state, Connecticut has a wide range of habitats and birds. It has Long Island Sound, and the shorebirds and seabirds that come with it. It has inland meadows and forests and swamps that can be full of migrating species in the spring and summer.
It also has newcomers that have found the state hospitable.
“The Northwest Corner is one of the best places now to see common ravens,” Parnell said.
Field guides — easy to carry, simple to use — have been a part of birding for nearly a century. Roger Tory Peterson’s 1934 “Guide to the Birds” opened up avian life to ordinary Americans on a way that no book had done before. In turn, it made them environmentalists.
Parnell said that as a boy, he got a copy of the “Peterson Guide to Reptiles” as a gift. It steered him in the direction he’s been following since.
“It got me outdoors,” he said.
Other guides to the state are on the market. Stan Tekiela’s “Birds of Connecticut” came out in 2000. “Birding in Connecticut” by Frank Gallo was published in 2018.
Rather than carry a book, many birders now carry iPhones with the appropriate apps.
“What’s great about them is that they give you the bird songs, right there with you,” said Patrick Comins, executive director of the Connecticut Audubon Society.
But Comins, who collects field guides, admits he consults the printed page all the time.
So does Angela Dimmitt, of Sherman, president of the Western Connecticut Bird Club.
“I see a bird I’m not sure of, and I pull them all out and spread them all across the table,” Dimmitt said.
Margaret Robbins, owner of Wild Birds Unlimited in Brookfield, said she’s looking forward to seeing Parnell’s book on Connecticut birds.
“I think that it’s good that he’s done a series of these books,’’ she said. “He’s got a lot of experience.”
Robbins said Sibley is still her go-to field guide. But not her only one.
“I have field guides up to the wazoo,” she said, laughing.
Sometimes, she said, they need updating.
“I have customers coming into the store still using 50year old Peterson guides,” she said. “I tell them, ‘C’mon ... You can’t do that.’”