Not for Australia but the US by Richard Crossley. He has taken pictures and habitats of birds and put them into a page digitally as they would be seen in the field.
From the website there also seems to be a Bristish Guide in development as well.
I am quite impressed with the approach of images of birds as they would appear in the field, to get a grasp of their “jizz” etc.
The page below shows an example of an Upland Sandpiper and if you scroll forwards and back you can see other birds. I like the Black Scoter page.
http://www.crossleybooks.com/books/?album=1&photo=163
Can any one see the potenial for a field guide like this for Australia.
Michael Ramsey
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Sorry, got distracted and sent my last message before I had quite finished.
Anyway, i don’t see why the approach wouldn’t work for Australia — it would be a nice supplement to the excellent field guides already extant. Hope we get to return before it is done though. Perhaps in a year or two.
Eric Jeffrey Falls Church, VA USA
As might be imagined, the Crossley guide has fueled a lot of discussion in the U.S., mostly positive. It seems more useful as a study guide than a guide for use in the field, but for that purpose it appears really helpful. Future printings/editions that improve some of the colors, such as on the flycatchers, will improve the guide still further. People have differing views on the sparsity of text, which may take some getting used to or be difficult for some.
One suggestion that I have seen raised is that Crossley would be an even better guide as an internet guide (I understand that you can only see some of it on the web), so that the images, which tend to be small in the guide, can be viewed at a larger size.
Seems to me that a guide that allows birders to study the many ways that birds look in nature at the times when they are not actually in the field observing them
The Phalarope and the Upland Sandpiper are brilliant, but when I clicked on to the Roseate Spoonbill I felt that maybe you wouldn’t need a field guide like this to do every species (I don’t think you can confuse a Roseate Spoonbill with anything else).
So, perhaps a field guide to commonly confused spp.
John Leonard
Hi Michael – a really unique and very useful approach for mine…. agree with you regarding the jizz – see no reason why a similar approach wouldnt be useful here – theres so many people taking images of birds these days in all manner of poses and environments so one can imagine no shortage of images that could be used.
cheers
David Taylor
David and Marg Taylor Brisbane
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I guess what he has done there is fix some of the disadvantages of photography over illustrations – the ability to have selected objects at any distance in focus, and to have in one photo many birds that one couldn’t expect to capture in one shot.
He’s also uses the extra space allowed by the web to show the same bird in many poses. We don’t often see a bird fom the rear in a field guide, either traditional or with photos.
I think the scrolling page is nice, but not really necessary. He could just break the scene into separate photos.
I think there’s lots of potential with this approach, and I suppose this was an inevitable development with the rapid increase in the number of people taking photos of birds.
Peter Shute
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