Molt in a Field Guide

I was honored to serve as a consultant on Ted Floyd’s still-new Smithsonian Guide, and so have naturally forborne from reviewing it. But there are two important points that have gone unremarked in the reviews of the book I’ve read so far–they both need to be made, and both need to be considered in connection with the publication of Steve Howell’s marvelous Peterson Reference Guide.

The first is that this Smithsonian volume is the first field guide ever to include information about the molt strategy of every single species it treats. That means that birders interested in such things have ready at hand much of the fundamental information required for a consideration of molt in the field; in an important sense, then, Floyd and Howell have written–unwittingly, I think–utterly complementary books, the one a reference guide to principles, the other a field manual permitting closer investigation of individual birds.

The other point, this one perhaps even more important in the grand scheme of birderly things, is that like Howell (in Molt and in all of his writings), Floyd is somehow, magically, able to write for two audiences at once. The Smithsonian guide’s inclusion of material on molt and geographic variation makes it a fine resource for even the most would-be sophisticated birders; but the book is simultaneously ideal for new birders and casual birders, who will learn enough to satisfy them without being distracted by the more technical material so gracefully and so unobtrusively included. And who knows, curiosities may be piqued.

And that’s just what North American birding needs: birders and bird books that address the full range of who we are and what we can become, speaking at one and the same time to those who are content to enjoy the beauty around them and to those who want to learn more. We’re fortunate early in this twenty-first century that there are those who understand this need, and are taking important steps to integrate our community more than it has been at times in the past.