Sibley Birds West: Field Guide to Birds of Western North America

In 2000, David Sibley published his mammoth Field Guide to the Birds of North America, which was quickly recognised as being a great guide, but rather too large for most coat pockets. So, three years later, two much more compact (and manageable) versions appeared: Field guide to the Birds of Eastern/Western North America.

The second editions contain similar great content to the first, but have titles more in proportion to their size, the front cover stating, baldly, Sibley Birds East (or West). The biggest differences are in the organisation. The species order has, inevitably, been changed to reflect current taxonomic fashion and the page layout has been changed from horizontal to vertical. In principle, this makes it easier to compare different plumages, but, in practise, I’m not sure it makes that much difference.

The other obvious difference is that all the images have been ‘digitally re-mastered’, so are more vivid and with greater contrast; whether you consider this an improvement on the previous, rather delicate, images may come down to personal taste. The text (especially the voice section) and maps have been comprehensively revised and updated to reflect latest knowledge.

As before the books come bound in a water-resistant cover, which stands up fairly well to the rigours of the field (and, believe me, mine have been tested!), with flaps that can be used as bookmarks. Again, the insides of these flaps are blank. It might have been nice to have used these in a more imaginative way, perhaps by including small family thumbnails linked to coloured page edges to help readers more quickly locate likely pages since we can no longer rely on species being in a particular order.

Despite these quibbles, if you are going birding in North America, these are still the guides to get (unless you are going on a road trip across the continent, in which case consider the full version), but I, at least, won’t be rushing to replace my (by now slightly battered) copies.

Book reviewed by Rob Robinson