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Updates and Corrections The fourth printing of the "Sibley Guide to Birds" is in stores as of February 2001. In that printing there are a small number of changes to art and text. I have listed the substantive changes so that those of you who own earlier printings can update your guides. Some general topics of discussion are outlined below, followed by a page-by-page listing of changes. Corrections to fourth printing - February 2001 Other corrections and comments - A long list of detailed comments and corrections can be found here I continue to work on the guide and I will post updates, supplements, and corrections on the website as I work on revisions for future printings. Please contact me with any questions or comments. Quick Index - click here to download a pdf version of the "quick index" (a one-page index of the common names of groups of species) that has been added inside the back cover of the fourth and later printings. At least two different versions of a quick index appeared on the web soon after the book went on sale. If you would like to download one of these and paste it into the cover of your 1st or 2nd printing guide, you can find one at the website of the Northern Arizona Audubon Society and another at the Avisys birding software site. Color reproduction has been criticized. In particular the brightness of certain rufous colors (e.g. Brown Thrasher) and blue colors (e.g. Jays), which seem too intense, and some gray species (e.g. gulls) which appear too bluish. Efforts to correct this are ongoing, but the process is not as simple as just "taking out some blue ink" or "darkening the rufous areas", and will almost certainly involve retouching original art and rescanning selected paintings (much of the trouble is with the original art). People often ask me if I am happy with the colors in the book, and I certainly am. The original paintings are rather bright, showing the birds at their best, brightest, and most contrasting, as if on a sunny day. The reduction and printing enhanced the colors throughout, creating a rich, bright look to the whole book, and in a few cases pushing the colors beyond the range of normal. When looking at the colors in the book bear in mind that our color perceptions of birds are controlled by lighting, a Brown Thrasher in sunlight looks much brighter than one in shadow, and there is of course no practical way to show such variation in a book. Similarly, the colors in the book itself appear to change under different lighting conditions, compare the appearance of the pages under fluorescent light with that under sunlight. Maps generated the most criticism, and I suppose rightly so. The attempt to show migration routes and vagrant records on a small field guide map was, in my opinion, successful, but many people pointed out that the green dots showing vagrant records are often not placed accurately. My intention was simply to show the broad pattern of such records for a given species, rather than details of individual records. In that sense the system works, but I agree that the dots imply a kind of precision that is lacking in the actual maps. Efforts are under way now to completely overhaul the maps, a project that may take two years or so to finish. Two name changes (Black-billed Magpie and Crested Caracara) are the most important correction in this printing. In both cases I had tried to anticipate American Ornithologist's Union Checklist Committee changes that were made just before this book was printed, and I got it wrong. Black-billed Magpie and Crested Caracara were both split from extralimital populations, and the scientific names of both were changed. There was some discussion of changing the English names as well to emphasize the splits, but in the end the committee decided to retain the established English names. * "American" Magpie changed back to Black-billed Magpie on page 350, 358, and 541 * "Northern" Caracara changed back to Crested Caracara on page 105, 128, 129, and 539 page 58: There are apparently records of Cory's (dark morph) Least Bittern from Ontario as recently as , so the caption at the bottom of the page is changed to read simply "very rare". The illustration of this plumage variant should be darker overall, corrections to art will be made in a later printing. page 112: The images of perched adult male and female Sharp-shinned and Cooper's Hawks should be different sizes to reflect the sexual size dimorphism in those species. Scans were inadvertently resized during printing and have been corrected so that the adult male Cooper's is just barely larger than the adult female Sharp-shinned, while the adult male Sharp-shinned is smaller than all others. page 115: Common Black-Hawk - The label that reads "white 'comma'" on the flying adult is changed to read "pale 'comma'" page 141: Ring-necked Pheasant - voice description is changed to reflect the fact that apparently only the male gives a loud harsh cackle when flushed. page 147: Greater Prairie-Chicken - label describing Attwater's subspecies is changed for clarity "Attwater's averages 10 percent smaller than Northern..." page 164: Piping Plover - all three standing birds have been enlarged to better represent the true size of the species, similar to Semipalmated Plover. page 240: Black Skimmer - the reference to "Oldsquaw" in the voice description has been changed to "Long-tailed Duck" page 292: Lucifer Hummingbird image has been reduced to better represent the true size of the species, similar to Costa's Hummingbird. page 361: Header text amended with new sentence "Tamaulipas [Crow] is now an extremely rare visitor". This species has been recorded only a few times in Texas since 1998, and should be identified there with great care. page 374: Black-capped Chickadee - the fresh adult Eastern bird has been enlarged to be larger than the Pacific bird, similar in size to the Rocky Mountain bird. page 378: Drab Gray Birds of the Arid Southwest - a text note has been added "see also Gray Vireo". page 455: Hooded Warbler - the right-hand bird in flight is an adult male and should be labeled as such. page 485: The adult Clay-colored Sparrow image is too dark and contrasty in the first and second printing. This has been corrected with a new scan. page 514: Brewer's Blackbird - the bird labeled "adult male nonbreeding" is now called "drab 1st winter male (Aug-Mar)", as this plumage type seems to be scarce in general and virtually all males in winter look essentially all black. Therefore the all black bird here is now labeled simply "adult male". |
