{"id":449,"date":"2010-04-15T16:36:30","date_gmt":"2010-04-15T23:36:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.windemuths.com\/?p=449"},"modified":"2011-11-03T16:40:34","modified_gmt":"2011-11-03T23:40:34","slug":"a-good-field-guide-is-necessary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.windemuths.com\/?p=449","title":{"rendered":"Field Guides"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Elegant Trogan<\/p><\/div>\n

After being gone for three months to S. CA and Arizona, it was good to come back home to Ridgefield NWR and listen to and see the familiar birds of this area.\u00a0 I find myself comfortable (perhaps too comfortable) with the songs\/calls and identifying marks of the refuge birds.\u00a0 Birding hundreds of miles away always presents the challenge of learning (sometimes over again) the songs and identifying marks of birds that you are not completely sure of or haven\u2019t seen for a long time, like the Elegant Trogan, which I was fortunate to be able to have seen for the last three years.\u00a0 I find myself checking bird guides and listening to bird songs on my iPod much more than I do here at home.<\/p>\n

I am very appreciative of the tremendous variety of field guides that are now available for the beginning or advanced nature explorer, some of them being very specific to certain areas of the country.\u00a0 When I first started birding, many years ago, I started with the Golden Field Guide for Birds of North America.\u00a0 I still have that little field guide, held together with rubber bands and paper clips, but holding a treasure of\u00a0 notes and dates from years ago.\u00a0 I have since transferred all of those notes and dates to a spread sheet where I now keep track of the birds I have seen.\u00a0 I have also graduated to other field guides, with the National Audubon Society\u2019s the Sibley Guide to Birds<\/em> being my favorite.\u00a0 But, many times I also find myself checking Peterson\u2019s Guide, Kaufman\u2019s and several other guides when I have a particular bird that I am finding difficult to identify.<\/p>\n

If you do not have at present a field guide to the specific nature area that interests you, I encourage you to get one right away.\u00a0 Your world will broaden tremendously as you read about the habits, locations, and identifying marks of the birds, flowers, trees, mammals, etc. that are your passion.<\/p>\n

If you would like to see some of the possible field guide options, stop by the visitor kiosk at the River \u201cS\u201d and ask to see what we have.\u00a0 Any good book store will also have an abundance of options that you can choose from. Bur wherever you go, make sure you get one, or two good field guides and get started in broadening your natural world.<\/p>\n

Some of the unusual birds that have been seen at the River \u201cS\u201d over the last month are Golden Eagle, Common Teal, Eurasian Teal, Cooper\u2019s Hawk, Greater Scaup, Pileated Woodpecker, Northern Shrike, Varied Thrush, Pine Siskin, Lincoln\u2019s Sparrow, Rufous Hummingbird, Redhead, Common Merganser, Peregrine Falcon, Northern Rough-winged and Cliff Swallow, Greater White-fronted Goose, Blue-winged Teal, Orange-crowned Warbler.<\/p>\n

This is migration time for birds.\u00a0 Come and enjoy the variety of birdlife at the refuge and don\u2019t forget to bring a good field guide!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After being gone for three months to S. CA and Arizona, it was good to come back home to Ridgefield NWR and listen to and see the familiar birds of this area.\u00a0 I find myself comfortable (perhaps too comfortable) with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.windemuths.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.windemuths.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.windemuths.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.windemuths.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.windemuths.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=449"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.windemuths.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":456,"href":"https:\/\/blog.windemuths.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449\/revisions\/456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.windemuths.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.windemuths.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.windemuths.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}