Field Guide Fever
(Page 2 of 3)
June/July 2003
By Terry Krautwurst
And that, I think, is the reason why I still can't pass a bookstore without heading for the field guide section—and why my office shelves are packed to bursting with guides big and small, paperback and hardcover, old-fashioned print and new-fashioned compact disc.
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"Another mushroom book?" my wife asks incredulously.
At least I know I'm not alone in my addiction. Under titles that begin with "Field Guide," Books In Print lists more than 300 volumes. There are guides both exceedingly general (Field Guide to Iowa's Critters) and excruciatingly specific (Field Guide No. 4: Tertiary and Quaternary Geology of the Salinas Valley & Santa Lucia Range, Monterey County, California). There are guides to slugs, germs, fossils, cows and molluscan spawn. There are titles that make you wonder (Field Guide to Common Americans) and others you don't want to think about (Field Guide for Human Skeletal Identification). There are those that have nothing to do with nature (A Field Guide to... Windmills; Sailboats; Hot Sauces) and others that have more to do with human nature (Field Guide to North American Males).
MAKING A CHOICE
Choosing a field guide to a subject as basic and popular as birds or trees can be especially daunting. Dozens of possibilities exist. Here are some tips.
Look for guides specific to your interest. Don't buy Birds if you're mainly curious about waterfowl; look for Waterfowl. If you want to identify wild edibles, Plants & Flowers could help, but Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants will get you there faster.
Two field guides are better than one. Spoken like a true field-guide junkie, but it's a fact. One guide may have excellent illustrations but no range maps; another may feature great descriptions and range maps but murky photos.
If you can swing it, get both a popular guide from one of the major publish ers and a good regional guide specific to your area. I love my Newcomb's Wildflower Guide, but I'm glad I have Wild Flowers of North Carolina, too.
If it moves, get a picture guide. If it doesn't, look for a "keyed" guide. Picture guides help you identify things by sight; they show you what to look for in the few seconds you may have to glimpse a bird or animal. Keyed guides take you through a deductive series of questions—what shape is the leaf; what color is the flower—that leads to identifying a single species. In some books the keys are in ordinary language. In most, though, they contain terms such as fibrovascular bundle and cylindric-ovoid. Don't be intimidated. Just use the guide's glossary. A description might read, "Leaves pubescent with capitate trichomes, or farinose when dry." Hey, all that means is that the leaves are covered with soft bristly hairs or whitish powder.
