Mike sent a number of us this note today--it applies directly to my new 
Ornithology students--this is exactly the thought I'm trying to convey when 
I say color doesn't matter (it is useful don't get me wrong)--but, look at 
proportions, behavior, song, habitat--develop your gestalt --I've never 
seen these thoughts put this clearly in print before, I think these authors 
are right on--I can't wait to see this book!!
Dave

>From: "Mike Busam" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: "TUCKER, Casey" <[log in to unmask]>, "Bill Heck" <[log in to unmask]>,
>         "jeff brown" <[log in to unmask]>,
>         "Channer, Todd" <[log in to unmask]>,
>         "David Russell" <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: "new approach" to shorebird ID
>Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 15:48:27 -0500
>X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.2180
>X-Real-ConnectIP: 216.68.8.174
>X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.45
>X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.52 on 134.53.6.11
>
>Greetings... This is only tangentially related to yesterdays discussion (I
>hope!), but there's a new shorebird photographic field guide set to be
>published by Houghton Mifflin in April 2006
>(http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/catalog/titledetail.cfm?titleNumber=688988). 
>
>The authors are Richard Crossley, Kevin Karlson, and Michael O'Brien.
>Excellent and well-known birders, all of them, Crossley used to run
>passerine surveys at Cape May during the fall migration. There's an entire
>chapter devoted to Crossley and his work in Jack Connor's book "Season at
>the Point: The Birds and Birders of Cape May." (it's a great book, as well).
>
>Anyway... here from the publisher's website is a little bit from the dreaded
>jacket blurb:
>
>"This guide provides more than 870 stunning color photographs, sequenced to
>give a general impression of a species first and progressing to a more
>detailed image of the bird throughout its life cycle. Captions list
>characteristics in order of importance, reflecting the thought process that
>experts use to identify birds."
>
>Recently, I saw a very, very long post to another list serve by one of the
>authors of the book, Kevin Karlson. Karlson explains in more detail what the
>goals of this book are. This longish piece is just a snippet from an even
>longer post. You can read the whole post here:
>http://listserv.arizona.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0601a&L=birdwg01&T=0&F=&S=&P=2016
>
>He makes some interesting claims. I'm curious to see the book. Anyway, here
>is the "snippet":
>
>===============
>" . . . . This all changed three years ago when my co-authors of our new
>field
>guide, The Shorebird Guide (Houghton Mifflin Publishers, April 2006),
>Michael O'Brien and Richard Crossley, asked me to change the entire
>concept of the book that I proposed from traditional plumage/field mark
>dissection with static side-on portraits to a concept that stressed
>impression based field marks as your initial and primary ID approach.
>This impression-based concept stresses variables such as size, shape and
>structure, behavior, habitat use, overall coloration, and vocalizations
>as a simpler, yet more accurate, approach to INITIAL field ID than the
>plumage/field mark approach that dominated the US birding community for
>decades.
>
>The real ace-in-the-hole of our advanced evolution of the jizz approach
>is the direct comparison of any bird in the field to other familiar
>birds, or even inanimate objects, to first determine the size of a bird
>in question, which is the first hurdle for an unfamiliar bird's ID. Next
>is to carefully note the overall shape of a bird, and the finer details
>of its structure, such as bill shape and length, leg length, etc..
>Finally is the direct comparison to similar species, where previously
>"impossible" ID's are now possible with comparisons of shape, structure
>and other physical features previously overlooked by the "experts" in
>conventional field guides. We have shown in our new book how to separate
>Long and Short-billed Dowitchers, Western and Semi-palmated Sandpipers,
>and Eastern and Western Willets (among others) in all plumages without
>ever looking at feather patterns or specific field marks and
>measurements. I birded for twenty-four years under the impression that
>these species could not be reliably identified, except for extreme range
>individuals, only to find that the experts were looking past the obvious
>and simple for complicated feather analysis or technical measurements to
>solve these problems.
>
>After rebelling against this concept for our shorebird guide, I started
>to put this impression based approach to work in the field. The going
>was slow, since old habits are hard to break, but after about six
>months, I started to build a personal database of impressions that
>seemed to be immediately accessible to my unconscious thought process.
>By initially employing a simple set of overall basic impressions rather
>than plumage analysis, a surprisingly accurate picture was quickly
>obtained. Accurate because these physical features do not change during
>a calendar year, as does plumage due to molt and feather wear.
>
>I found myself becoming very proficient in field identification of
>flying birds, short duration sightings, and distant birds, where my
>previous approach of plumage and field mark analysis would have left me
>grasping for straws of pertinent field marks that I did not have the
>time to analyze or forgot which important field mark I should be looking
>for. In the course of three years working on this guide with two
>brilliant field birders, I picked up many tips on how to apply this
>impression based discipline. The result today is that I look at each
>bird the way an artist would study any subject, and store those
>impressions in an instant for use in eventually forming the ID of an
>unfamiliar bird. I also look at birds that I thought I knew well before,
>and see physical features and important aspects of structure that are
>critical to a solid field ID that I never noticed before. I feel that I
>have increased my field birding skills a great deal in the last three
>years by enjoying this impression based approach, after stagnating for
>the last ten years trying to further apply scientific analysis to field
>birding skills."