The Conservancy Corner - Natural History Field Guides By Dick Byers |
The book market today is flooded with volumes on identification. You can get field guides on just about every aspect of natural history with several to choose in each field. A beginner has to be confused on which field guides to buy let alone someone considering a book for a gift. This field guide craze began in 1934 and has been on a steady incline ever since. That year Houghton Mifflin Company took a "chance" on Roger Tory Peterson's "A Field Guide to the Birds" and cautiously printed a measly 2000 copies in which Roger had to forego royalties on the first thousand. That entire first edition sold out in a week, quite a feat at the height of the Great Depression. Today the revised 5th edition still disappears from the bookstore shelves. Other book companies, seeing Houghton Mifflin raking in the dough, entered the competition. Today there are several dozen different guides on the birds alone.
If birds were so successful, would trees and wildflowers also have appeal? Book publishers discovered field guides on numerous other subjects disappeared from the book stores almost as fast as the ones on the birds. Houghton Mifflin now has over 45 field guides with subjects ranging from rocks and minerals to insects, shells, fossils, weather, and stars and planets.
Likewise, Alfred A. Knopf got on the bandwagon with a big series on nature wisely titled "The Audubon Society Field Guides." This title gave them quite an edge since bookstores seem to stock more of this series than any other. The Audubon title alone seems to sell the books whether they are any good or not and a few of them are pretty inferior to others on the market. Ironically, one of the poorest of the Audubon field guide series is the one on birds.
Simon and Shuster is another company that has a nature series and there are quite a few others. The list goes on. Which ones do you buy? I certainly can't speak for them all. Some aren't worth the paper they are printed on. Others are indispensable. I can make some recommendations and give some pointers.
Whatever your field of interest, check with the people who share your interest to see what they recommend and ask more than one person. More important than finding out which ones are good, you'll learn which ones to definitely avoid. Also keep in mind that these books are called guides and not bibles for good reason. No book is definitive for everything you see in the field. They can only guide you to the proper identification. None are perfect. Their worth is based on how quickly and easily they can lead you to the identification of the subject in question.
WILDFLOWERS
For wildflowers, every amateur botanist carries Newcomb's Wildflower Guide and backs it up with the Peterson Field Guide to Wildflowers. Lawrence Newcomb, a banker with no professional botanical training, devised a key system the lay person can use. His system is based on the number of flower parts, primarily the number of petals, the leaf arrangement and the leaf type. Though not technical, it does require some practice, but with it, a person with no background in botany can identify most of the blooming wildflowers, shrubs, and vines in the field. While the Newcomb key system is easy to use, the text and illustrations are not as good as in the Peterson guide, so buy both. Unfortunately, both of these guides are in need of an update because the scientific name of many of the plants has changed. The drawback to the Peterson guide is it is based on the color of the flowers (which some people like), so you have to do a lot of page flipping. Each page, however, has a short description at the top allowing you to quickly determine if your flower stands a chance of being on that page. The Peterson guide does not cover any of the flowering shrubs or vines.
Most wildflower guides have the following drawbacks. The flower must be blooming. If it is in bud, in fruit, or any other stage of growth, these guides are pretty useless because the identification is based on the structure of the flower. Although Newcomb's Wildflower Guide does show a considerable number of the fruits, the key system is still based on the blooming flower, consequently, if you have a plant in fruit, but don't see any flowers in bloom, your chance for identification will have to wait a year unless you want to flip through the guide page by page hoping the fruit will be illustrated. It would be better to consult a field guide to fruits. There are a few of those on the market. The "Berry Finder" by Dorcas Miller, "Pods" by Jane Embertson, and "A Guide to Wildflowers in Winter" by Carol Levine are three that show the fruits, both fleshy and dry, of the majority of wildflowers.
A few guides show unopened buds and fruit along with the flower, but these are mostly restricted to those flowers that bloom along a long spike where you can see all the stages at once. If it blooms from the bottom of the spike up, the buds will be on top, the open flowers in the middle and the fruit at the bottom. A near perfect flower field guide for the amateur would be one with the illustrations of Peterson, text description by Margaret McKenny and the key system of Newcomb with the buds and fruit illustrated for each flower. No such guide exists. That would be some undertaking, but it would sell like lottery tickets.
BIRDS
Most of the bird books do the job of identification quite well. Choose one with paintings rather than photographs. The artist can illustrate the bird better than the photographer. For the beginner, stay away from the Audubon Field Guide, and purchase the 5th edition of Peterson's "A Field Guide to Birds of the Eastern Region." This book has paintings with arrows that point to the major field marks that clinch the identification with the text and the range maps on the same page. Later you can graduate to guides that cover the entire country. The only one with photographs that does the job well is by Ken Kaufmann.
Natural History Field Guides
Part 2 of 3
INSECTS & SPIDERS
The only field guide to insects I like is the textbook that author Donald Borrer used for his entomology course at Ohio State University and that requires you to take the course to learn the terminology. Field guides to insects in general usually cover the entire continent resulting in too many species that aren't found in your area. Insects very common in California back yards may be non-existent in Pennsylvania and vice-versa. A field guide to the common insects of Pennsylvania would be useful, but when you restrict a guide to such a limited area, the number of sales becomes limited and the price goes up. Most publishers fear not turning a profit on books limited in range. How many sales would they make on a book on the insects of Westmoreland County, for example? Consequently, insect identification books usually cover the entire continent north of Mexico so that anyone on the continent is a potential buyer. The latest trend, however, is to print field guides to special groups of insects, such as dragonflies and butterflies. "Butterflies through Binoculars: The East" by Jeffrey Glassberg covers all the eastern species. Dragonfly books are also restricted to specific regions, such as the "Dragonflies of Cape Code," although the latest dragonfly book "Dragonflies through Binoculars" by Sidney Dunkle, covers the entire continent. Being an ancient order, dragonfly species are not very numerous, so the book covering the continent is still only 266 pages and fits easily into any field guide carrier. The drawback to this continental dragonfly book, however, is the small size of the pictures. You practically need a magnifying glass. The Peterson Field Guide Series also has a guide only on moths and another on beetles, but these are for those people with a really deep interest in entomology. There are two books the novice should consider getting. These are the little "Golden Guide to Insects" by Herbert Zim and Clarence Cottam and "The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders" by Lorus and Margery Milne. These will contain the species most people encounter. As your interest increases, you can graduate to the more complex and harder to use volumes.
The spiders are another tough group that usually requires field collection, preservation and a dissecting microscope for identification. The Audubon guide mentioned above by the Milnes and the Golden Guide, "Spiders and their kin,"are usually all the general citizen needs. If you want to go deeper, "How to Know the Spiders" by B.J. Kaston is a spiral bound well illustrated key. Old book stores might have a small pocket guide to webs.
FERNS
Most of the ferns are fairly easy to identify. There are some tough "look alikes," however, that fall into the "thrice-cut" category. These are ferns whose leaves are divided into leaflets and the leaflets again divided into leaflets which are again divided into leaflets. I have yet to find an easy to use key for the thrice-cut ferns. Like the flowers, timing is also a factor in fern identification. You can't identify them in the fiddlehead stage and for most of the "thrice cut" types, you have to wait for the development of the sporangia. A must is the Peterson series "A Field Guide to Ferns," by Boughton Cobb. This guide also covers the club-mosses, horsetails, spike mosses and quillworts for all the species in the Northeastern U.S. The now out of print Golden Guide on "Non-flowering Plants" is worth having if you can find one in a used book store or flea market. Two others are useful and fit inside a shirt pocket. These are the Nature Study Guild's "Fern Finder," by Anne and Barbara Hallowell, and "Ferns of Northeastern United States" by Farida A. Wiley. Once I have identified a fern, I check the identification with "A Field Manual of the Ferns and Fern-Allies of the United States & Canada. The latter is hardly a field guide. It is 7 X 10 inches, 1 and 1/8th inches thick and weighs three pounds. I like to travel light. I keep that volume at home and check my field identification with the text and colored photographs. It isn't necessary to have. I'm just a sucker for books.
TREES
Trees are the easiest of nature's organisms to identify. The nice thing about them is you don't have to wait for a particular season of the year to see some flowering part, leaf or fruit to clinch the identification. They can be identified in winter, spring, summer or fall by leaves, bark, flowers, buds, twigs, fruit, and even shape and odor for a few species. Nearly any field guide will suffice. The Peterson and Audubon field guides are both excellent for both the trees and the shrubs. The Nature Study Guild's "Master Tree Finder"is a shirt pocket guide that also works well. There is one for leaves and one for winter buds. A book that really has it all is the "Tree Identification Book" by George Symonds. It has photographs of the flowers, fruit, leaves, twigs, thorns, buds and bark – all in one volume for the trees in the east. Another volume "The Shrub Identification Book" covers all the shrubs in similar fashion. The only drawback of these two volumes is they are not field guide size, but big 8.5 X 11 inch books with good sized photographs. Even the most notorious urbanite who has never stepped off the concrete can identify trees with it.
The only problems you'll have with the trees are twofold. First there are the hybrids. Oaks, for example, frequently interbreed producing characters that will confuse even the professionals. Another problem is being able to see the buds. Sometimes in the winter, if you can't identify a tree by its bark and the first branch is 40 feet above your head, you may have to hunt for clues on the ground to identify it – like fruit, fallen twigs, or old leaves from last year that have fallen. William M. Harlow's "Fruit Key & Twig Key to Trees and Shrubs" is helpful here. He has nice photographs of all the nuts, acorns, dry fruits and twigs with buds.
MUSHROOMS
There are at least a thousand mushrooms in Pennsylvania and no field guide covers them all. Mushrooms of Eastern North America by Bessette, Bessette & Fisher has about 1800 species, but it covers all of the northeastern states and Canada and it is not a field guide. It's a 5 pound, 1.75 inch thick, 7 X 10 inch volume. Like the insects, you need more than one book for the mushrooms. I own eight, but the one I find myself using most often is "The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms" by Gary Lincoff. If you're only going to buy one, that's the one to get.
REPTILES & AMPHIBIANS (Herps)
I have a dozen books on these two groups, but the one I grab first is "A Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians" by Roger Conant in the Peterson Series. The Golden Guide to "Amphibians of North America" by Hobart Smith has excellent illustrations. At home I back up my identification with "Pennsylvania Amphibians and Reptiles" by Larry Shaffer of the Fish Commission and "Amphibians and Reptiles of Pennsylvania and the Northeast" by Hulse, McCoy and Censky. The latter volume has detailed life histories for each species for those who want to go beyond identification.
Natural History Field Guides
Part 3 of 3
FISH & FRESHWATER LIFE
"The New Field Book of Freshwater Life" by Elsie B. Klots covers all bases - the fish, herps, plants, insects, mollusks, and crustaceans you'll find in the water. "A Guide to the study of Fresh-water Biology" by Needham and Needham has excellent drawings of representatives of each group even down to the microscopic level of the single-celled algae and protozoa. These old stand-by's are probably out of print and only in used bookstores. I don't have any of the latest publications, so I can't make any worthwhile recommendations in this field.
MAMMALS
"A Field Guide to Mammals" by Burt & Grossenheider in the Peterson series is all you need. Mammal guides have their greatest use for the really small mammals, such as mice and shrews. The book is only handy when you encounter a dead one or one caught in a live trap, so you can see it well. Mammal field guides may open your eyes, however, to a lot of species you never knew existed. For example, are you familiar with the masked shrew of our area? Mammals are usually identified by sign, since we don't often see them, so check out the section on animal tracks and sign. But if you can't tell a gray squirrel from a fox squirrel or a deer mouse from a shrew, then you definitely need a mammal field guide. Someone contacted me about a year ago to tell me about the least weasels coming up on his backyard porch to eat sunflower seed. The description of the behavior alone told me they weren't least weasels, a rare meat eater in our area, not much bigger than a house mouse. The man said they were bigger than a chipmunk. Puzzled, I asked him to send me a picture. He sent a nice shot of a red squirrel. I was rather astonished that someone couldn't recognize a member of the squirrel family. This gentleman could definitely use a field guide to mammals. Squirrels are among the most visible of the mammals, being diurnal in their activity. A good companion for any mammal guide is a guide to animal tracks & sign.
ANIMAL TRACKS
Field guides to animal tracks are almost as numerous as the bird guides, but very few are any good. I own about eight tracking guides but I never carry any of them with me when I go looking for tracks. Instead I carry a tape measure, a notebook, a camera and a small scrapbook I made by copying the best illustrations from each of the 8 field guides I own. When I come upon a set of tracks I can't identify with my scrapbook, I make careful measurements and record them in the notebook. These notes include the time of day and weather conditions. Tracks measured at 4 PM in snow on a sunny day, for example, will be larger than the same tracks measured at 8 AM. Most tracks are made at night and when we find them the following day, there has usually been enough time for the sun to melt the edges and collapse the walls of the track making the print larger. In short, the time to go winter tracking is right after daybreak.
I carry a camera to photograph the pattern and gait which is often more important than the tracks themselves. I trail it as far as I can to get other clues – scat droppings, diggings, rubbings, urine scent markings, whether the animal went over or under a branch, etc. If I am still confused about what I'm tracking, all this information is carried home where I then consult the full tracking library.
Numerous references are necessary because no one can draw or photograph all the variations in animal tracks and sign. Every author on tracking tackles their presentation differently and each book has illustrations not found in other books. The following are the tracking guides I find most useful: "Mammal Tracks and Sign" by Mark Elbroch. This book is excellent and in standard field guide size, but it's one and a half inches thick, weighs four pounds and costs $44. Mark covers just about every mammal in North America, many most of us will never see – wolverines, arctic foxes, mountain goats, peccaries, etc. I copied out just those for Pennsylvania and pasted them in my scrapbook. Other than these drawbacks, Mark has fine drawings and fairly good photographs of tracks, scat, scrapes, signs of feeding, burrows, dens, etc., on glossy paper. It is very comprehensive and reflects a lot of time in the field. Mark is also the author of "Bird Tracks and Sign," a valuable volume for its feather illustrations.
"Tracking and the Art of Seeing" by Paul Rezendes, has good photographs and drawings of tracks, gaits and other sign with an excellent accompanying text. The large format, however, will not fit into any field guide carrier.
James Halfpenney's "A Field Guide to Mammal Tracking in North America" is good for measurements and photographs of scat. Louise Forrest's "Field Guide to Tracking Animals in Snow" is great for patterns and gaits. "A Field Guide to Animal Tracks" by Olaus Murie has numerous drawings of gaits and scat plus a lot of lore on the animal itself. Most of the other tracking field guides I've seen are mediocre to these. Avoid the tracking guides that show only the footprints. They are next to worthless and you will rarely see the perfect footprint that matches the illustrations. There is a book out there called "The Complete Guide to Tracking." Believe me, no tracking guide could ever be complete. If such a book did exist, it would be far too heavy to carry. You can find track variations in the media – mud, sand, snow, dust,etc., that you'll see in any tracking guide. There are too many possibilities.
LICHENS AND MOSSES
There are no field guides I know of specific to these two little known groups. The little out-of-print Golden Guide on the "Non-flowering Plants" covers a few of the most common lichens and mosses.. There are, however, definitive studies on these two groups. They are contained in several massive volumes. I own only one, "Lichens of North America" by Brody, Sharnoff & Sharnoff. It is 800 pages, 2 and 3/8 inches thick, over 11 inches tall and weighs 10 pounds. You could use it as a sinker to drown your mother-in-law. Only my friend Tom Pearson would lug it around in the woods. The work on the mosses comes in two large volumes. The mosses and lichens are not easy to identify and you frequently need a dissecting microscope. People who know these two groups well are rare indeed. I am not one of them. I only recognize a few of the many species that are out there. Timing is critical for identification too. You must see these plants during their reproductive stage in order to make identification possible for the majority of them.
In conclusion, I want to make it clear that I have barely scratched the surface of the field guide market. I have mentioned what I consider the best for the person with little experience. There are many others I have not mentioned on many subjects. There are field guides to habitats, fossils, shells, coastal wetland plants, the tiger beetles of New England, the list goes on and on. New field guides keep appearing and I didn't mention some of the latest ones that are good because they aren't where I think an inexperienced person should start. The Sibley Guide to Birds, for example, is what many birders are currently using, but these are vastly experienced people who know exactly where to look in the book. It would overwhelm others. Also remember, these books are only guides. They do not cover every set of circumstances, which you will find out for yourself when you gain some expertise in their use.
