In 1934 Roger Tory Peterson was turned down by nine publishers before Houghton Mifflin accepted his tiny field guide to the birds of eastern North America. A Field Guide to the Birds was oriented exclusively toward an audience interested in field identification, and nobody knew if that audience was large enough to support even one book.
In 1983 the National Geographic Society brought out a 464-page guide to all the birds in North America. The same year, Knopf published a three-volume Audubon Society Master Guide to Birding. Both books offered more detailed information about plumage, configuration, and shape than any of their predecessors, but they did it at the cost of portability. The Master Guide to Birding weighs several pounds; it is a book to consult before and after birding trips, not during one.
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Each species gets an extended treatment that includes a brief introduction, a general description, an account of similar species, a discussion of songs and calls, behavior, habitat, distribution, conservation status, subspecies, taxonomic relationships, plumages and molts, and a short list of references. Color photographs supplement the text. The range maps for each species are the most detailed I’ve ever seen. They even include the disjunct populations that live beyond the boundaries of a species’s main range.
Fall migration presents more difficulties. Adults and that year’s young are all passing through. Each has a distinctive plumage, but the distinctions are much subtler than in spring. Even if you get a good look at the bird you may not be able to name it.
