The Nature of Things

My rating: 5 of 5 stars The unique Crossley ID guide series continues with this volume covering the birds of Britain and Ireland. This beautiful book covers all the regularly occurring birds in Britain and Ireland. Several of them will be familiar to American birders, even those who have never traveled to either location. This is especially true of the shorebirds and raptors, many of whom are international fliers. These guides are geared toward beginner and intermediate birders, but even advanced birders will find their approach to identifying birds an innovative one that will not bore them. Richard Crossley's method is to use actual photographs of each species of bird in many different poses and place them against a background which shows appropriate habitat for that species. In many ways, it combines the best of the traditional field guides which use paintings of the birds to emphasize their most noticeable field marks and the newer guides that use photographs of birds. His metho...

Roger Tory Peterson revolutionized birding in the 1930s with his innovative way of presenting images of birds in field guides. His drawings showed the birds in stylized poses that emphasized their most noticeable markings which helped to identify them. Arrows pointed to those marks, and texts named them to help even the most novice birders find identifying field marks and "name that bird." Peterson was godfather to generations of birders and was one of the prime movers in popularizing the hobby. Since that time, most bird guides have followed in Peterson's footsteps, using some variation of his methods. It was time for a new revolution. Enter Richard Crossley. Crossley's ID guides, not field guides because they are not really meant to be taken into the field, utilize a radically different method of looking at and identifying birds. Crossley uses photographs of the birds, doing what birds do - perching, flying, eating, preening, catching prey, and, in the case of water...

American birders are used to birding field guides that can be easily carried into the field where the user can refer to them when they see an unusual bird. Richard Crossley comes from another tradition. He grew up in England where the practice was to take a notebook and pencil with you when birding to make notes about or draw what you saw. Then you returned to base and compared your notes or drawings to what was shown in your birding guide books. That tradition has informed his recently released magnum opus , The Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds . This is not a book to carry into the field with you, unless you are planning to combine your birding with weight-lifting. This is a BIG book. But it is definitely a book that you would want to refer to after your return from the field for it provides a wealth of information about birds. Here, for comparison of size, are a few of my guides laid out on my dining room table. Crossley is on the left; next is the recently published Stokes guide w...