The Warbler Guide
Tom Stephenson and Scott Whittle, Drawings by Catherine Hamilton
Princeton University Press, 2013
The Warbler Guide joins an ever-growing list of reference guides aimed at aiding in the identification of single groups of birds. Seabirds, hawks, shorebirds, hummingbirds, pigeons, woodpeckers, and sparrows, to name just a few, have all had guides covering them published in the last twenty to thirty years. Some groups have had multiple treatments. Indeed, this is not the first treatment for New World warblers. That distinction probably goes to Warblers of the Americas: An Identification Guide by Jon Curson, David Quinn, and David Beadle (1994, Houghton Mifflin Co.), closely followed in time by Warblers by Jon Dunn and Kimball Garrett (1997, Houghton Mifflin Co.). Though both books were from the same publisher, the former covered the entire family including Central and South American species, while the latter (part of the Peterson Field Guides series) covered only species north of the Mexican border, as does the new Stephenson and Whittle book.
The two earlier warbler guides followed an older field guide tradition of being illustrated exclusively, or nearly so, by paintings while the new guide uses photographs. I must confess to a longstanding bias towards artwork over photographs in field guides.
However, the tremendous increase in the capability of photography with the advent of digital technology and the huge increase in the availability of quality photographs is forcing me to reevaluate my old biases, at least for some uses. I still think good artwork works best for the traditional field guide, especially for new birders and country wide guides. But for specialty guides focusing on specific groups such as this guide, the ability to present over a thousand photographs as this guide does, showing birds from many different angles demonstrates that photography is adding new dimensions to the identification guide. Artwork, however, is not completely obsolete. There are two pages (pp. 114-115) of drawings illustrating undertails by Catherine Hamilton as well as two pages of silhouettes (pp. 544-545) and probably hundreds of drawn icons.
In its use of photographs this guide seems to me to be like the recent Crossley Guides (The Crossley Guide: Eastern Birds by Richard Crossley (2011) and The Crossley Guide: Raptors by Richard Crossley, Jerry Liguori, and Brian Sullivan (2013), both Princeton University Press). These books are attempting to give the birder the kind of broad experience with seeing birds from many angles and situations that in the past was only possible with years of field experience. While they can certainly help immensely with that goal there is still no substitute for actual time spent in the field.
The first thing that needs to be said about this guide is that it is not a field guide! This is in no way meant as a criticism. I don’t think the authors intended birders to be carrying this guide around in their back pockets – it is just too big and heavy for that! It will, however, become I believe, a constantly used resource for the vast amount of information contained in it about warbler ID. The book begins with 130 pages of introductory material on the organization of the book, what to look for in identifying warblers, ageing and sexing warblers and the single largest section, learning and identifying warbler songs, chip notes and flight calls. The information is generally clearly presented and often extensively and well-illustrated. I did note a small handful of things that I thought were slips or odd choices. There is a well done and fairly extensive four page (pp. 12-15) “Topographic Tour” labeling the various parts and feather groups and the terms for them that will be important in understanding identification points in the main species accounts. However, four pages later in a section on “Facial contrast” the captions of the illustrations of Townsend’s and Blackthroated Green warblers refer to “auriculars”, but that term is not defined until p. 27. In the topography section the auriculars are labeled “cheek patch”. A similar mixing of terms occurs on p. 27 where in a photo of the head of a male Blackburnian Warbler it is described as having a “Distinctive triangular cheek patch” while on p. 28 a female Blackburnian is described with “dark facial marks form a triangular pattern”. I also found a couple of the choices of species to illustrate points to be a little odd. On p. 26 a photograph merely labeled “Redstart” is used to illustrate the behavior of flashing tail and wing feathers while feeding. The “Redstart” pictured is a Painted Redstart from the southwest. Why not use a picture of an American Redstart, a far more common and widespread bird that many birders will encounter? Similarly, on p. 30 the bird chosen to illustrate “eyelines” is a Golden-cheeked Warbler which has a limited range in Texas. Why not a Blue-winged Warbler, widespread in the eastern United States? These are I admit minor points and I have had enough experience with publishing that I suspect a number of these choices may have been made by photo editors, rather than the authors.
The heart of the introductory material is the large section on warbler vocalizations. In teaching warbler songs, rather than the transliterations (i.e. a Yellow Warbler’s sweet, sweet, oh so sweet) used in most guides, the authors use sonograms, an illustrative method pioneered in field guides by Chandler Robbins, Bertel Bruun and Herbert Zim in their classic Birds of North America field guide (1966, Golden Press). However, Stephenson’s and Whittle’s use of sonograms is far more extensive and elaborate than in that earlier guide. Serious warbler students will want to download the companion audio files available for $5.99 from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library website at: macaulaylibrary.org/guide/the-warbler-guide.
The introductory material ends with an extensive set of usually double page “quick finder” charts to aid in rapidly narrowing down an identification of a warbler. There are spreads of photos of warbler faces, full profiles of side views, 45° angle views, underside views, and illustrations of spring and fall eastern warblers and one spread of western species. These are followed by the previously mentioned two pages of undertail drawings. Finally, in keeping with the authors stress on learning warbler vocalizations there are 22 pages of sonogram “finder charts” to help in narrowing down and identifying warbler songs, chip notes and flight calls. I cannot in this short review do justice to the authors’ extensive and truly impressive organization and presentation of this sonogram material. All of this is introductory to the extensive presentation of sonograms of warbler songs in each individual species account to be found in the main part of the book. The coverage of warbler vocalizations is truly the most ground-breaking part of this very impressive guide.
The main part of the book is, of course the actual species accounts. Once again, the authors use an innovative approach in their arrangement of the species accounts. Rather than a traditional taxonomic sequence found in many guides or some arbitrary arrangement by color or habitat or some other chosen character, the species are arranged alphabetically by English name. When I saw this arrangement upon first opening the book I was prepared not to like it, being a traditionalist and usually favoring a taxonomic sequence, but the more I used the book the more I found the arrangement quite handy. There is a two-page (pp. 540-541) presentation of the current thinking on warbler taxonomy.
The individual species accounts contain information on field marks, close-up photos of “Distinctive Views”, a section of “Additional Photos”, a section on “Comparison Species”, a section on ageing and sexing, range maps, and of course, an extensive presentation of sonograms of songs with comparisons to similar songs of other
species. A problem I found with some of the range maps is that where a river forms the boundary between states, the river is shown, but not the heavier line of the state border. This can be confusing, especially along the Rio Grande on the Texas/Mexico border.
At the back of the book are some pages on “Similar Non-warbler Species”, two pages on hybrid warblers (though Brewster’s and Lawrence’s, included here, already had a spread in the main species accounts), a quiz and review section, flight photos and discussion, charts of measurements and habitat and behavior information and a glossary.
Two-page accounts for seven warbler species found only on the US/Mexico border (Crescent-chested, Fan-tailed, etc.) are included in the back of the book after the Yellow-throated Warbler account, though the Table of Contents in the front places them in alphabetical order with the rest. There is no mention that this is a section of border rarities. These seven accounts contain a glaring layout error: for each species the three “ Additional Photos” are unlabeled on the bottom of the first page of the write-up and the “Comparison Species” photos at the top of the second page are mislabeled as “Distinctive Views”.
Overall, this is a very impressive guide and the few problems I have noted can be easily corrected in later printings or editions.
More on the Warbler Guide
In my review of The Warbler Guide by Tom Stephenson and Scott Whittle (2013, Princeton University Press) in the October 2013 issue of the Linnaean News-Letter, I mentioned among the many features of the book a series of two page “quick finders” that compare various views of warblers. These “quick finders” are available online as free downloads from the website thewarblerguide.com. They are available in either PDF or JPG file formats. Also available for free download at the website is a PDF file of a four page guide to ageing and sexing of fall eastern warblers. In addition to thumbnail photographs illustrating various plumages and brief descriptions of the relevant marks to look for, the guide lists which species cannot be aged and/or sexed in the fall.
After the October issue of the News-Letter came out, Linnaean member Rick Wright informed me of a major paper on warbler songs by Lynds Jones published in The Wilson Bulletin over a hundred years ago (Jones, L. 1900. Warbler Songs. Wilson Bulletin 12(1):156). As in the new Stephenson and Whittle guide, Jones attempted to simplify the learning of warbler songs by grouping the species by characteristics of the songs with no regard to the then accepted taxonomic arrangement of the warblers. Jones describes the songs of forty-six species, stating that “eleven species [have] yet to be studied.” The Jones paper can be downloaded at sora.unm.edu/node/3075. The paper is a fascinating look at the state of knowledge of warbler songs before the advent of modern aids such as recordings and sonograms. I thank Rick for bringing it to my attention.