Browsing Bliss Awaits You

It appears you're using Internet Explorer or an early version of Edge, which is a bit like watching a black-and-white TV with "rabbit ears." You're missing symmetry, joy and actual knowledge — not only here on my website but across the internet. I suggest you upgrade to Chrome or Firefox. You’ll discover a lot more nature, maybe even actual rabbit ears.

— Bryan

Conifers by Jerry Jenkins

A Tribute to the Field Guide

Resources for Learning Nature from Books — Not Apps

Nature apps are like movies: the book is better. Yes, you can now carry a virtual library of field guides on your gadget. But if you really want to learn to identify stuff in nature — from birds to butterflies, oaks to orchids — get yourself an actual book. There among its pages you will find detail, order and the harmony of families.

Don Eckelberry’s grebes.

This assault of mine on nature apps is not one of those polemics dedicated to the “tactile” pleasures of real books. I read books and e-books with equality of enjoyment; and these apps do have their place in the field. What I’m saying instead is that when you resolve to learn a new taxon in nature, in all its diversity and beauty and complexity, you will advance as a student more easily from words and images on the page.

Nature apps foist upon us, figuratively and literally, small views of the world — cheap short-cuts to your mystery species. Type in the state, maybe habitat, choose a petal or feather color, for example, and the approximate size or shape of your organism. The app delivers a list. No searching through actual pages of possibilities, no discovering and learning as you go, no seeing how the panoply of species fall into place, how they resemble or relate to one another in form or function. Learning nature with an app is like learning a language with a phrase book. You’ll get by, you’ll be wrong a lot, and your knowledge will be cursory.

More than 40 years ago I began to discover birds by wandering outside with binoculars and roaming the frontiers of my field guide — outside with birds and then again back home at night. On a single page of the Audubon Water Bird Guide I could witness Don Eckelberry’s spectacular grebe illustrations — and I could see and feel what it means to be a grebe in form and function. As I leafed through Roger Tory Peterson’s flycatchers, I saw what made a Contopus a Contopus and how a Contopus was certainly not an Empidonax. And in Ann Haven Morgen’s Field Book of Ponds and Streams, well, those pages were the next best thing to getting wet in actual ponds and streams.

Sure, there’s a place for apps. If you already know birds, for example, but cannot recall the marks on Great Crested Flycatcher versus Brown-crested Flycatcher (tertial edges and belly, by the way) — it’s fine to whip out the app and double-check in the field. Apps are great for that. But if you are new to birds (or any other group), do not use an app for learning. Use a book.

Birding apps have proliferated with gimmicks masquerading as teaching tools: one warbler app, for example, has so many ways to look at a warbler on a little screen that you might never look at actual warblers in trees. The apps remind me of weight-loss gadgets: so many under the sun, all competing for your dollars, none of them really that useful (except for the Sibley app, which I’ll get to below). Read your field guide instead; wander its pages on an expedition of text and illustrations and understanding.

Recommendations

Here below is my field guide to field guides, particularly some amazing guides to butterflies and dragonflies (among my areas of expertise) plus some other taxa. Many of these guides cover New England or the Northeast (where many of my readers and I reside). If you do not live up here, fear not: you will still find superb regional field guides — everything from The Butterflies of Cascadia by Robert Michael Pyle to Dragonflies and Damselflies of Northeast Ohio by Larry Rosche et al.

So visit your local bookshop and buy some of these books. Remember, these are my suggestions for your learning. I’ve listed web resources and worthy apps as well — but please don’t obsess on the gadget while you’re outside: you’ll miss a lot of nature, which isn’t very natural. Finally, this is a living document, er, web page — I’ll add your worthy suggestions. Send them by email. Thanks!

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