i arrive at my boat, and drift down one of the river’s many anaconda-infested tributaries, noting channel-billed toucans and royal flycatchers flying overhead. in the amazon rainforest, riverbanks form into large, muddy slopes known as clay-licks. at these sites, thousands of birds gather together to feed on the clay, which aids in the digestion of their typical diets of fruit, berries, nuts, and seeds. it is at these clay-licks where one of the most incredible feats of nature can be witnessed: a mass gathering of parrots and macaws. 

as the sun rises higher and higher, i could hear the grating calls of hyacinth and scarlet macaws in the treetops above the river. the tributary widens, revealing clay cliffs of spectacular proportions. the knot in my chest loosens, and there are macaws everywhere. the stress that often grips me melts away; i am free as a bird.   

it was in these impenetrable hectares of rainforest where i discovered what it meant to be truly “present.” i was nearly 3,500 miles away from the city, yet a giant mahogany tree on the riverbank reminded me of the chrysler building. i could not deduce why i felt so oddly at home in the peruvian rainforest, even with its 16 species of highly venomous coral snakes and pit-vipers. this sensation was defined by a persistent sense-of calm bliss that i could only recall experiencing in fleeting bursts. i first assumed that my tranquil condition resulted from being so far-removed from my familiar new york city life. there was nothing to plan, no deadlines to catch, and most of all, there were no other people around, aside from my family and the boatman. all at once, i could at last pin-point the origins of this tranquil state as a sensation that i temporarily experience while playing the piano, journaling, and most especially while bird-watching.

as the journey continued, i became pleasantly detached from the racing thoughts and restlessness i had grown so accustomed to. was this a feeling that i could only hope to experience in near-isolation, or was it something i could recreate wherever i was, even in the middle of the bustling city i call home?        

let me begin by saying that i love new york, even when my anxiety makes me feel otherwise. i have been a resident of new york city for 21 years, and a bird-watcher for about half of that time. there is something magical about being able to grab an onion bagel with extra cream-cheese at zabar’s, and upon exiting, to observe a migrating magnolia warbler on broadway in rush hour.

the day before leaving for peru, i remember crossing central park and arriving on the east side, shuffling through jarringly loud groups of tourists, beanie-clad hipsters, fashion junkies, and craft-beer snobs. it is not easy to stay still in the wake of the caffeine-fueled machine, and my chest began to tighten, but the passing silhouette of a bird of prey over park avenue suddenly made me pause. it was pale male, the city’s beloved resident red-tailed hawk hunting for mice like an nyc divorcee looking for a husband.

with my restlessness temporarily relinquished, i walked east along 5th avenue where the park borders the street, and giant elms as old as the city itself cast their shadows on the cobblestone. i felt safer in the shadows. on the ground, european starlings, the winged-rats of nyc, flocked together amongst house sparrows and pigeons, voraciously gobbling down food-scraps. the pugnacious european starling was first introduced to the city in 1890 in the delacorte theater as a prop for a production of shakespeare in the park. soon after, their numbers boomed, and the european starling is currently considered one of the most widespread and abundant birds in the new world. hated by bird-watchers, this species isn’t classified under the latin name sturnus vulgaris for nothing!

overhead was a sight less familiar to bird-naïve new yorkers, as blackpoll and bay-breasted warblers made their annual migratory rounds, gleaning insects from branches and remaining hidden in the foliage. occasionally, someone will ask me what i’m observing. i don’t typically talk to strangers, but people get curious when they see a young man with a jerry garcia shirt and a pair of swarovski binoculars standing in the middle of a bustling city block and staring up into the trees. 

in my experience, anxiety compels a person to become an observer. the senses are constantly deluged by information, and the world can take on the appearance of a strange and hyper-real dreamland. walking into a crowded supermarket is akin to entering a packed stadium. the white walls are too bright, the colors of the food too saturated and plastic-looking. the sounds of people laughing and conversing assault the senses, as if someone were screaming into my ears with a loudspeaker. i am ever-alert, and distract myself by observing objects in the room, taking note of their colors, sizes, and dimensions. observing what is around me, be it a bird, a train, or the color of someone’s shoes, allows for me to slow-down the pace of my thoughts, making me feel calm and centered. 

bird-watching transforms this nervous energy into something productive and of implicit emotional-value to me. seeing a rare bird grips my mind, forcing it to hone in on a particular set of details, rather than reel in response to a tsunami of sensory information. one could say that the act of bird-watching is analogous with refereeing a soccer game. the bird-watcher and the referee are both keen observers, and their targets are both constantly on the move. it only takes a matter of seconds and one small mistake for the entire course of the game to be thrown off, or for the bird to fly away unidentified.

seeing a rare bird is always a rush, however, it is not my primary goal when i set out into the field. i am chasing a feeling, a sort of fleeting-high. the objective is to experience the beauty and tranquility of being in the moment, and seeing a rare bird is like the icing on the cake. as a warbler comes into view, my attention shifts to the bird’s shape and plumage, and slowly strays away from any nagging introspection and negativity. in that moment, i’m no longer hyper-focusing on the tightness in my chest, nor am i replaying awkward conversations i had months prior in my head. the warbler in my binoculars is the only thing that exists, and its features are like a puzzle i must piece together in the fleeting seconds before it flies away. in this way, bird-watching allows for me to feel calm and present, while simultaneously eliciting the joy that comes from following my passion.

before i was born, my parents bought a small, stone house in the catskills in upstate new york, just around two hours outside of the city. i spent almost every weekend growing up at my catskill home, and would lose myself for hours in the woods adjacent to my house. on june nights, i would hunt for gray tree frogs which perched along the edges of our small koi pond, catching insects in mid-air with their long, sticky tongues. in the fall and winter, i would set up camera traps around the property and monitor the mammal species that passed through. i routinely terrorized my mother by catching milk snakes in her garden, and flipping every stone in the rock wall she worked so hard to build in search of salamanders. my parents were strong hikers, and my father proposed to my mother on the summit of the grand teton, later taking her to kenya to climb to mt. kilimanjaro for their honeymoon. hiking was an immensely important part of my childhood, and i loved watching what i now know were red-tailed hawks and turkey vultures lazily circling over mountain summits.

my love of birds was cemented in this place upon first observing the rare and highly sought-after connecticut warbler. at the time, i knew very little about birds, but this odd little warbler caught my eye with its strange habit of walking, rather than hopping on the ground as it ran into the cover of the dense shrubs that lined my driveway. upon discovering that i had stumbled upon something so rare, it was as if an entirely new world had opened up for me. i began to conceptualize bird-watching like a game, as there are a given number of species found within a particular area, some common, others very rare, and all entirely unpredictable. finding a rare bird gave me the same satisfaction that i imagine i would experience if scarlet johansson gave me a deep-tissue massage.

identifying birds soon became a passion and a labor of love. a few species, like the empidonax flycatchers, a small family of identical drab-green birds, are impossible to distinguish by plumage alone, even in the hand. this makes things especially challenging, or fun depending on how you look at it, as the five species found in eastern north america can only be distinguished by their vocalizations. by this point, i was head-over-heels in love with birding and all of the challenges that came with it.

bird-watching became an interactive, real-life version of “where’s waldo,” and when i couldn’t identify my waldo bird by plumage, i quickly learned the calls, anatomy, and behavior of all the birds in my local region. i began collecting field guides. first, guides that covered the species found in eastern north america, and later graduating to books encompassing borneo, japan, the philippines, and other exotic regions of the world. reading about these unfamiliar and alluring species made me feel as though i was traveling to the very remote lands in which these birds resided. when i was anxious, flipping through a guide to the birds of borneo or thailand propelled me into a positive mindset, and i made it my mission to one-day travel to these far-away places.

there were times when anxiety left me house-bound, and bird-watching gave me an excuse to get outside and out of my comfort-zone. i was commonly drained of energy, and making the daily commute to the ramble in central park brought me out of my periodic fatigue. i would find myself losing track of time and walking for miles, often beginning my excursions at the 67th st. park entrance and finishing at the reservoir near 93rd st. when i couldn’t see friends, bird-watching allowed me to become a part of an entirely new community of people who shared my passion, and simultaneously helped me to become a better birder and naturalist in general.

my infatuation with birds led me to meet some of the most influential people in the natural world, including neil degrasse tyson, whose office was directly next to mine in the museum of natural history during a summer internship. above all, bird-watching has allowed for me to develop techniques to quell my anxiety by being present, which eventually translated into my personal discovery of the incredible healing-powers of mindfulness-meditation. i currently have more field guides than shelf-space, and my collection has now grown into the thousands.

upon seeing that lifer connecticut warbler in my driveway, i have since traveled to peru, costa rica (four times), kenya (six times), the galápagos, russia, and other remote parts of the world in search of my feathered friends. my travels have taken me to some of the very places that seemed so far out-of-reach when flipping through my regional field guides as a young boy in new york city. for a long time, i would fantasize about outrunning my anxiety, half-expecting that my next trip to peru, costa rica, or even the ramble in central park would “cure me” at last. today, i smile knowing that there is nothing to run from, and i remember the old adage, “wherever you go, there you are.” 

as we begin ascending a back-road on peekamoose mountain, i notice the habitat changing. new york’s lowlands mostly consist of oak-hickory forest. at higher elevations, the oaks and hickories are replaced by sweet and gray birch, mountain ash, hemlock, and other north-woods species. in these high-elevation forests resides a creature so rare that even hunters and devout naturalists may go their whole lives without seeing it. it is an animal that is as adept in the trees as it is on the ground, and is the only mammal species that regularly preys on porcupines. it is a creature of the night, terrorizing caged chickens on the rare occasions that it ventures into human-habitation. this is a species feared by every caged and domestic animal in the country north of tennessee. this is the fisher (martes pennanti).

we finally arrive at the peekamoose mountain trailhead with about an hour of light left to spare. the woodland here looks impenetrable and full of shadows, as it usually does after 6 p.m. nighttime comes quickly this high up on the mountain. a few hundred feet below, the shrub-land in the valley is set ablaze by the day’s last rays of sun, and i feel as though i am caught between two hemispheres. the deep, monosyllabic “whoot” of a long-eared owl reverberates through the ancient, unlogged spruces lining the mountain. a white-footed mouse, apparently flushed out of hiding, scurries over my boot and darts into the protection of a hole at the base of an old beech tree.

i follow an old deer path that veers off from the well-groomed, summit trail about a hundred feet into the woods. after about five minutes of walking, i arrive in a clearing. there are impressions in the ground here, called “beds,” where white-tailed deer and wild turkey clump together on the ground to rest. upon closer investigation, there is an entire array of animal tracks on the muddy ground below. i notice the tracks of the red fox, which are easily identified by the presence of four toes, a deep heel-impression, and visible claws in the prints. old, 19th century stone walls snake through these woods like highways, and animals use these as corridors to travel through their large territories with ease. i decide that this is a good place to post up for the last 45 minutes of daylight in my quest to find the elusive fisher.

my technique for observing uncommon or sought-after animal species is relatively simple, and it involves me staying completely still for hours on end. nocturnal animals like the fisher (my target animal) or the gray fox have an exceedingly good sense of hearing, and are very sensitive to any foreign sounds in their environment. the fisher is usually only seen momentarily or by accident, and is most commonly observed darting across dirt roads at night. the fisher is a member of the weasel family (mustelids), and is a relative of the otter, ermine, stoat, wolverine, and honey-badger.

this large weasel is adorned with a chocolate-brown pelt of intensely soft fur, and the market value of a fisher coat is mind-bogglingly expensive. in fact, my mother lovingly refers to these animals as “coats.” this weasel is found in the boreal and old-growth forests of canada, alaska, and the northern states, and was successfully reintroduced into the catskills in the 1990s.

in new york, the fisher is found in extensive old-growth forests, the favored habitat of its prey, the common porcupine. the fisher typically chases a porcupine up a tall tree, then swats at it with its paws until the porcupine falls to the ground disoriented. the fisher then flips the porcupine on its back, and eats its exposed, quill-less belly. here on peekamoose mountain, i see signs of porcupine everywhere: their scat looks like tiny sausage links, and their tracks look like tiny human footprints with visible claws. looking around i notice a number of trees missing chunks of their bark. this makes me happy, as i know that porcupines eat the cambium of trees, or the inner tissue of the bark, and where porcupine abound, so does the fisher…

i take a seat next to an old beech tree on the rock wall and wait. i have about 40 or so minutes of daylight left. this is my favorite time of day, the crepuscular time, or what my parents eerily refer to as the “gloaming.” this is the best time to observe animals in the forest, as the nocturnal species are just beginning to come out of their prospective holes and burrows. the long-eared owl i heard earlier has now been joined by two other owls, likely territorial males, and their ‘hoots’ reverberate through the mountain woods. what was a quiet patch of woods a mere hour ago has now become a booming epicenter of animal activity. deer mice scuttle over my timberlands and into the protection of the rock wall. the moon is full and a cavalry of coyotes howls in unison. they don’t seem very far away, maybe a couple miles at most. the woods become more alive with each passing second.

i estimate that i have about 25 minutes of light left before it’s time to pack up and go. right as i begin to lose hope, i notice the snake-like figure of a good-sized mammal leaping down from the trunk of an old spruce. my eyes widen as i am inundated by the almost-manic energy of unadulterated excitement. the animal i am observing is perhaps one hundred feet away from me, but its long, thin body and black pelt immediately give away its identity. no other animal in these parts looks anything like the creature in front of me, as the fisher is perhaps one of the most distinctive mammals in our northern forests.

the animal approaches, traversing the rock wall, and i hold my breath as so not to make any unconscious movements that could scare it away. it seems completely oblivious to my presence, or rather, it knows that i am there, but could truly care less. the fisher is now a mere 15 feet away from me, and its movements suggest that it is looking for food. it then jumps down from the rock wall, allowing me to observe its foraging behavior as it explores every crevice, hole, and fallen log within its territorial radius. the fisher then gets uncomfortably close to my person, and seems to be intrigued by the logo of the tree on my timberlands. this makes me slightly nervous, as i did not expect to have such a close encounter with a german shepard-sized weasel foraging only a hand-full of feet away from me. the fisher catches my gaze and we both pause. its eyes are pitch black, like seal’s eyes, and it cocks its head at me like an inquisitive dog, before bounding off into the thickets. what a close one…

the members of the mustelid family have a reputation for being some of the most aggressive and vicious animals on the planet, and this statement is at least half-true. my chicken coop is essentially raided weekly by fisher, mink, and a long-tailed weasel that has taken up residence in the woodpile adjacent to the coop. weasels have fast metabolisms and are always on the move, exploring every nook and cranny of their environment. when they hunt, weasels will kill as much prey as they possibly can and stash it in a cache, which is typically a hollow log, or the root system of a tree. on one particular occasion, a long-tailed weasel raided my chicken coop, killing 15 adult chickens, 10-plus chicks, and destroying all the eggs. it may be inappropriate for us to label weasels as “vicious,” as terms like this specifically refer to human trails, and man has a certain propensity to anthropomorphize animals. it is incontestable, however, that weasels are some of the most efficient hunters among all north american mammals. 

weasels are masters of staying out of sight. one winter day, i found myself on a ski lift in deer valley utah, which is about fifteen minutes away from park city, where the sundance film festival happens every year. that particular day was a whiteout, and i was about to catch some fresh powder on my favorite ski run, centennial. looking down, i noticed the movement of what i could only describe as, at the time, a “snow snake.” it took me a minute to realize that i had just seen an ermine or short-tailed weasel in its winter plumage. that was about five years ago, and i haven’t seen another ermine since. they are certainly not rare animals, but their small size allows for them to enter any crevice or burrow and stay out of sight. furthermore, the two weasels in the mustela family, the long-tailed and short-tailed weasels, turn white in the winter, and the black dots on the end of their tails and noses are the only things that give them away in deep snow.

weasels have always particularly interested me because of how resilient and adaptable they are. this family of animals has found a niche in almost every conceivable habitat available in the country: the river otter took to america’s mountain streams, rivers, and lakes. the fisher and the marten dominate our northern, boreal forests. the black-footed ferret inhabits the dry prairies of the midwest. while the two small mustela weasels took to the farms, pastures, and gardens of the lowlands. the fisher, my favorite mustelid, is currently experiencing a large population increase, as reintroductions in the catskills, vermont, and new hampshire have been very successful. in fact, the fisher can now be found, albeit sparingly, in princeton, new jersey. if you ever find yourself eloping in the institute woods, keep an eye out for the snake-like silhouette of my furry friend, the fisher.

i had low expectations as to what i would find, as it was a rainy october day, and the wind-chill and lack of sun were not good signs for the cold-blooded denizens that i was seeking out. after a couple of hours futilely flipping rocks in the rain, i decided to return home, knowing that i’d come back empty-handed. but something caught my eye from beneath the bright foliage of a blackhaw viburnum: an unusual little bird that would change the entire course of my life.

there are many unusual things about the connecticut warbler. to begin, it doesn’t breed in connecticut, and is, in fact, only a rare fall migrant to the region. what really caught my eye, however, was this strange bird’s highly un-warbler-like behavior. while most warbler species tend to forage in the canopy, this unfamiliar-looking, long-legged warbler walked on the leaf litter, foraging for insects while scurrying beneath the cover of the low viburnum shrub. in that instance, i knew that this odd, unobtrusive little bird would mark the beginning of a journey that has since taken me to some of the most exotic, and biologically diverse regions of the world.

in my mind, the next logical step was to observe every single species of bird that inhabited my neck of the woods. so with my newfound excitement, i picked up my first bird field guide, david allen sibley’s landmark, “the sibley guide to birds of north america.” that night, i flipped through the pages like a mad scientist on a stimulant binge. i was in awe of everything the book had to offer, from the subtle distinctions in bill length amongst empidonax flycatchers, to the difficulty of identifying warblers in their fall migration plumage, to the art of identifying raptors in flight – the list goes on and on, and it was all a game that i was determined to win.  

sibley’s guide was, upon its release, immediately regarded as the most comprehensive, user-friendly bird guide on the market. the first edition was published in the year 2000 (the second, in 2014), and preceding this year, the only books widely regarded as the gold standards of bird identification included: “the national geographic field guide to birds of north america,” the “golden guide to birds of north america,” peterson’s regional field guides to birds of eastern and western north america, and ken kauffman’s then-recently published, digitized photographic guide to north american birds. after leafing through my copy of the “sibley guide,” i decided to pick up the rest of these acclaimed field references. while many of these books are still regarded as highly useful in the field, at the time, i discovered that they all had a number of shortcomings and limitations.

i remember sitting next to my kitchen window staring at my birdfeeder one cold winter in accord, n.y., perusing the “finches and grosbeaks” section of “the golden guide to birds of north america” (robbins), in awe of how portable this little field guide of only 4.6 x 7.5 inches was. the illustrations not only accurately and beautifully depicted birds in their adult and juvenile plumages, but also included other unique features, such as sonograms that visually depicted bird calls, as well as silhouettes that aided in quick identification.

the shortcomings of this field guide presented themselves when i glanced upon a strange little bird that superficially resembled a common redpoll, but was distinctly larger, with a whiter belly and rump. i became elated, believing that i had stumbled upon a rare vagrant and lifer bird (a species not native to, but annually, or nearly-annually recorded in north america), the hoary redpoll, only known from arctic and subarctic regions of the far north.

something, however, didn’t sit right with me, and my intuition told me that the extensive pink breast, and darkly-streaked belly on this specimen reflected the plumage of the more common acanthis flammea (common redpoll). so with this identification challenge at the forefront of my mind, i decided to consult my bible, the “sibley guide.” upon flipping to the finches and grosbeaks section of the book, i discovered that sibley had included two subspecies of the common redpoll (southern, and greenland [greater] common redpolls). to make matters even more confusing, two subspecies (also aptly named southern, and greenland [hornemann’s] hoary redpolls) were included as well!

i was able to ascertain that the bird at the feeder in front of me had a distinctly darker pink wash on its breast than the southern subspecies of the hoary redpoll, and was able to judge, based on the size of the specimen, that i was indeed looking at a common redpoll, albeit, the confusing, lighter-plumaged, southern subspecies. it was then when i realized the limitations of a 4.6 x 7.5 – inch field guide in addressing various regional subspecies that have the capacity to baffle even the most experienced of birdwatchers. the “sibley guide,” being 6.3 x 9.8 inches, is not really much of a “field” guide, rather, it is a book to be left in one’s car or on one’s coffee table to be readily consulted after a trip back from the field. the space it utilizes allows it to describe nearly every subspecies or example of regional variation amongst all of north america’s birds, including 111 rare vagrant species unlikely to show up in other field manuals.

the “peterson field guide to birds of eastern and central north america” was another one of my favorite guides as a child, as it included roger tory peterson’s signature “field marks” (arrows pointing out the unique physical and plumage traits of a given species), which eliminated much confusion for me in the field in the early days of my birding adventures. roger tory peterson is known as somewhat of a “messiah” among birders and naturalists at large, as his first edition of “a field guide to the birds” (1934) influenced the format and layout of essentially every modern field guide thereafter. the peterson guide stays on my shelf nowadays, and i often glance through it to appreciate the artwork, rather than use it in the field, for a variety of reasons. to begin, the species distribution maps in this book are not only out-of-date, but are placed at the very back of the book, as opposed to the page adjacent to the illustrations (or on the same page as the illustrations, as in the “sibley guide”). secondly, a significant number of vagrant or unusual species are left out of this guide, which has, in the past, lead to some bewilderment, especially in the instance of me confusing a vagrant black-throated gray warbler for the common black and white warbler.

with “sibley’s guide” as my precedent for what the perfect bird field guide should look like, i became obsessed with birds from all around the world. i made it my mission to collect field guides to birds from exotic regions, to study the behavior and ecology of the species, and to eventually travel to such remote places to find these unusual birds. my collection was starting to increase rapidly, and soon enough, i found that i needed significantly more than just the six bookshelves in my room, which were beginning to overflow. i became obsessed with collector’s items, and old, out-of-print copies of books that became increasingly difficult to obtain.

the strand bookstore on broadway soon became my new stomping grounds, and i’d spend hours reading and collecting books in the basement where the natural history section was located. my first regional area of interest was latin america, as i had been to costa rica multiple times since i was a youngster obsessed with herpetology. my copy of alexander skutch’s “guide to the birds of costa rica” was becoming increasingly well-worn with every trip i made back to the region; complete with a tallied checklist, annotations, along with the vertebrae of a dead giant cockroach that had, unbeknownst to me, crawled between the plates of the region’s beautiful hummingbirds and got squashed! so i picked up the more portable, and highly acclaimed “birds of costa rica,” by richard garrigues, which then became a staple for all my field expeditions in this avian paradise. but why stop at costa rica? panama contained its own unique avifauna as well, as demonstrated to me by angehr’s detailed flycatcher plates in his work, “birds of panama.” the same went for el salvador, mexico, belize, and, well, the rest of latin america in its entirety! my shelves were now lined with books like howell’s “guide to the birds of mexico and northern central america,” schulenberg’s “birds of peru,” peterson’s “mexican birds,” and many, many more. 

there’s something beautifully aesthetic about leafing through the pages of a bird guide to species from exotic regions around the world. for example, when reading through harris’s “field guide to birds of the galapagos,” the reader begins to understand the link between the local species’ intricate courtship displays, behavior, and coloration, and the influence that this isolated, volcanic environment has on their ecology, behavioral mechanisms, and evolution as a whole. we come to understand that the flightless cormorant doesn’t need wings because of the lack of predators in the environs they live in, as well their unique affinity for spending most of their lives on open water, diving for the plethora of fish that abound in the reefs just below the ocean’s surface. collecting field guides has not only made me aware of the wide array of biological diversity among exotic species, but has also made me perceptive of the unique geography of such regions, the impact of species’ isolation on divergent evolution, as well as the behaviors that are prompted and utilized as a result of living in such topologically distinct locales.

this leads me to the importance of habitat preservation in relation to the conservation and protection of species that are habitat specialists (species only found within very specific habitats). roger tory peterson once said, “although i have seen thousands of meadowlarks, i have never seen one in oak woodland. likewise, i have never seen a wood thrush in a meadow.” this quote brings me back to the early days of my birding adventures in the shawangunk grasslands of southern new york, a mere 40 minutes from my home, where i found myself observing a wide array of species i had never seen before in the unfamiliar, expansive grassy habitat i found myself in. in the later half of my copy of corey finger’s handy “field guide to the birds of new york,” there is a section entirely devoted to this region’s ornithological diversity, and i visited the location without hesitation, in the hopes that i would tally off a handful of more lifer-species.

the savannah sparrows i would often observe in the little meadows adjacent to my home were replaced by the protected grasshopper sparrow, a habitat specialist only found in tall-grass prairies, meadows, and overgrown farm fields. the cryptic and highly nocturnal barred owls i would so commonly hear at night in the woodlands near my home were replaced by the rarer, less vocal, and more diurnal short eared owls, which kited above the grasslands both alone, and in small family groups, patrolling for mice and other small mammals. in essence, field guides have allowed me to locate specific habitats and understand the ecological link between habitat specialists and the importance of these localities in sustaining a stable population of such unique species.

certain field guides provide comprehensive details about genus-specific identification that some of the more “big picture” guides like the sibley and kauffman books fail to elaborate further on. i am referring to manuals that tackle the identification struggles of separating similar species within a genus, such as owls, hawks, those tricky empidonax flycatchers — a family of flycatchers that are essentially indistinguishable in the field aside from vocalizations and times of seasonal appearance — finches, and more. this reminds me of an instance in which i found myself in the ramble in central park, rather heatedly debating with a group of bird-watchers about whether the bird we were looking at was a cooper’s hawk, or the nearly identical, albeit slightly smaller sharp-shinned hawk. unfortunately, separating the two species can provide a formidable challenge for even the most experienced birdwatchers. someone within the crowd remarked about the bird’s size, which was comparable to that of an american crow. however, in the field, there is often much dispute and overlap regarding the size of a small male cooper’s hawk, and a large female sharp-shinned hawk. size is only a partial factor in accipiter — or species with long, thin tails, and short rounded wings — identification.

luckily for me, i happened to have my copy of brian wheeler’s “raptors of eastern north america” in my coat pocket. on page 164, under the subheading, “similar species,” wheeler describes how the hackle — the raised feathers on the back of a bird’s head, which form a crest-like appearance — of the perched cooper’s hawk, along with its rounded tail are hallmark identification features that distinguish this species from the smaller, square-tailed sharp-shinned hawk. the bird in question was not vocalizing, so identifying it based on its call was not an option. the birders around me all carried copies of their respective kauffman, sibley, and national geographic field guides, which only gave sparse details about how to separate the two, focusing on differentiating accipiters strictly by vocalization, subtle differences in color, and details relating to the birds’ size. upon further investigation, i noted the bird’s rounded tail, raised hackle feathers, and wide terminal tail band, and surmised that the species in question was (almost) undoubtedly a male cooper’s hawk, and a small one at that. this was later confirmed to me by my fellow birdwatchers after a close analysis of the photos they had taken on their gargantuan tripod cameras (the unique identification feature of any eccentric birder). essentially, genus-specific guides call our attention to the details of a specific family of birds that are often excluded from regional field guides, thereby filling a crucial niche in ornithological literature.

personally, my most valuable bird guide (and treasure in general) is, in fact, a genus-specific guide entitled, “owls: a guide to the owls of the world,” by claus könig. this elusive book, at the time in its first edition, took me a whopping two years to finally get a hold of, and upon receiving it, sparked a passion for birds of prey that is just as strong today as it was all those years ago. owls in particular have fascinated me since i was a toddler, as one of my earliest memories involves me being harshly awoken from my sleep by the blood-curdling, banshee-scream of a barn owl (tyto alba) outside my window in the catskills.

owls fly on silent wing-beats, have impeccable hearing, and can rotate their heads a whopping 270 degrees. in addition, there is an enormous amount of geographical variation between species of owls, as they are a cosmopolitan family of birds that can be found in essentially every habitat in the world. while flipping through könig’s owl guide, i was immediately fascinated by south east asia’s scops owls, western africa’s eagle owls, indonesia’s masked owls, and the remote and isolated climates that many of these species inhabit. it was only after reading about the long-whiskered owlet that i begged my parents to take me to the remote amazonian rainforests of peru. similarly, it was this very book that prompted me to get my falcon license (a license which allows me to hunt with and train birds of prey). 

today, i have well over a thousand bird guides in my collection. my shelves are overflowing, my bedside table creaks under the weight of another stack, and every single drawer in my room is filled to the brim with field guides. my life-list of birds is now over 2,000 species, and most of the regional guides that i own are well-worn and full of annotations. you are likely to find me amidst a group of socially awkward, tripod-wheeling birders in central park, or scouring the towpath on campus with my treasured pair of swarovski binoculars, or maybe even perched on the terrace of my eating club, watching migratory raptors soar overhead. roger tory peterson, the pioneer of modern field guides and my personal birding hero died in 1996, the year i was born. perhaps it’s a sign that it’s time to take on his monolithic legacy.