Author's Bookshelf: The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior

You will know an author's passions, favorite topics and locales of choice by looking at the reference books on his shelf. Birds play important roles in my novels, especially ospreys, eagles, hawks, crows and ravens. Like many authors of my generation, I grew up with the Peterson Field Guides .

Whether you're a bird watcher with a "life list" or simply like to look up what you see while hiking or camping, the Peterson Guides are compact, encyclopedic, and small enough to fit in a knapsack. I refer to them often for quick reference about descriptions, size, range and bird calls.

However, if your characters are observing birds--or simply noting them in greater detail than comes from a casual glance or mention--then I recommend my favorite: The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior . The picture shown here is of the cover of my hardback edition from 2001. However, if you prefer the Internet for your research or want information about later editions, you can learn more about the Sibley guides to birds and trees on this website.

This book is large, lavishly illustrated by David Allen Sibley and, for the author or novice bird watcher, quite definitive. If you don't use a Peterson Guide for quick facts, this bird life and behavior book is a fine companion to the Sibley Guide to Birds.

From the publisher: I envisioned it as a book that would function the way a good field trip leader does – pointing out the things that make the birds more interesting and that relate the birds to other species and to their environment, enriching the whole birding experience. I drew on my 11 years experience as a professional bird tour leader to set the style and to choose the types of information that would be presented in the guide.

Example of my use of the book: I have seen Ospreys in Glacier National Park, but until I looked them up in The Sibley Guide, I did not know that once they caught a fish in a lake, they turned it facing forward as they flew. This excerpt comes from The Sun Singer , a novel that mentions ospreys quite frequently:

Fractured world, tangle of sunlight and water, burst of air bubbles, golden pebbles beneath the surface, white flowers above the surface, and he explodes into the sweet air, anarchy of water and wing. He pauses, is pausing and shaking out his plumage, adjusts the fish he's taken with its eyes forward, and rises on great wings onto the soft back of brother Wind and scans the wide blue for Eagle, thief of fish. Fish-hawk, he owns the sky and gives bent wings into the air, then glides, is gliding over rock toward the tall pine and the safe nest with two young soon to fledge.

If you are fascinated by birds in general and/or use them as characters, totems, symbols or as simply part of the scenery, I believe you'll enjoy The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior.


PS: I also use The Peterson Guides , referring often to my shelf of blue-covered paperbacks. Yet, for reasons of nostalgia, I'm drawn most often to the autographed Roger Tory Peterson 1941 edition of A Field Guide to Western Birds that once belonged to my mother. Note how tattered the dust jacket has become.



--Malcolm