ORNITHOLOGICAL LITERATURE 
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release, this book “For beginners, expert, and 
anyone in between. The Crossley ID Guide: 
Eastern Birds promises to vastly improve all 
birders' abilities to identify birds." The author and 
publisher claim “This book changes field guide 
design to make you a better birder...Unlike other 
guides, which provide isolated individual photo¬ 
graphs or illustrations, this is the first book to 
feature large, lifelike scenes lor each species. 
These scenes - 640 in all - are composed from 
more than 10,000 of the author's images showing 
birds in a wide range of views - near and far, from 
different angles, in various plumages and behav¬ 
iors. including (light, and in the habitat in which 
they live. These beautiful compositions show how 
a bird's appearance changes with distance, and give 
equal emphasis to characteristics experts use to 
identify birds: size, structure and shape, behavior, 
probability, and color. This is the first book to 
convey all of these features visually - in a single 
image - and to reinforce them with accurate, 
concise text. Each scene provides a wealth of 
detailed visual information that invites and rewards 
careful study, but the most important identification 
features can be grasped instantly by anyone.” 
The author, Richard Crossley. is an interna¬ 
tionally acclaimed birder and photographer, who 
has been hireling; since age 7 and. by age 21, had 
hitchhiked >160,000 kilometers chasing birds 
across his native Britain and Europe. His love of 
the outdoors and his interest in teaching, design, 
and technology shaped his unique vision for the 
future of birding and bird books. He is excited by 
the prospect of using now technologies to bring 
reality birding’ to a wide audience through many 
different media. He is a spokesperson for Nikon 
Sports Optics and coauthor of The Shore bird 
Guide (O'Brien el al. 2006; The Shorebird Guide). 
As can be drawn from the information above, 
this book was promoted extensively before its 
release, and within 2 days of publication there 
were more than three dozen blogs on-line 
providing reviews. Of necessity, these first reviews 
w ere based on initial impressions of the book and, 
when I received my review copy. I was as 
impressed as the majority of the other reviewers 
with the stunning photos and artistic composition 
presented on each page. The author is to be 
commended with the effort put into these outstand¬ 
ing and for the most part appealing compositions; 
on first pass only the tiny Spruce Grouse 
lFalcipeitnis canadensis) wedged in below the 
large male challenged my sense of balance and 
perspective. But. with any bird identification guide 
- especially one that makes such great claims - it 
must be tested by actually using it to assess its 
effectiveness, which takes time. 
Over the course of several months after 
receiving my review copy. I read the introductory 
materials as recommended by the author, which 
suggest how the book is intended to be used. It is 
not intended to be carried into the Field, but as a 
guide to be studied at home before and after a day 
in the field, or kept in the car as a reference. Indeed 
the size of the hook, larger and heavier than Sibley 
(Sibley 20(H); The Sibley Guide to Birds), makes it 
impractical as a field guide. Emphasis is more on 
general impressions of size and shape (G1SS). and 
there are no arrows pointing to field marks. 
Virtually all other bird identification guides 
throughout history have implored users to read 
the introduction first, hut the reality is that most 
users do not. There is an innate tendency to skip 
straight to the pictures. How will this impact the 
effectiveness of the guide? I have also attempted to 
use the guide as intended, by ‘studying’ in the 
evenings, and also after coming home from the 
field, from the end of spring migration and into 
early winter birding in Michigan. Here 1 consider 
separately how it appears the book will work tor 
“beginners, experts, and anyone in between” as 
claimed by the book's promoters. 
Beginners want photographs. But until recent¬ 
ly. photographic guides simply had too many 
shortcomings compared to the traditional field 
guides using artwork. Kaufman (Kaufman. 2000; 
Birds of North America) provided the first truly 
effective photographic field guide. The organiza¬ 
tion of The Crossley ID Guide may appeal most to 
beginners. The inside front cover provides small 
thumbnail photographs of representatives of each 
of the groupings the author uses to organize the 
book. These groupings are a combination of 
behavioral and taxonomic characters, Waterbirds 
are subdivided into Swimming. Flying, and 
Walking, while Lundbirds are categorized as 
Upland Gamebirds. Raptors. Miscellaneous Larg¬ 
er Landbirds. Aerial Landbirds, and Songbirds. 
Before the introduction, several pages provide 
single photographs of all regularly occurring 
species in the East in a size guide, which can 
act as a visual index of sorts although the species 
are labeled only with the four-letter banding code 
and not the full species name. An excellent pair of 
plates for beginners (and everyone else) to start 
with are Greater (Aythya mania) and Lesser scaup 
