Beginning in 2024, after some years of putting it on the metaphorical back burner, I made the decision to devote more time and effort to birdwatching. I was once an avid birder, meticulously listing every twitch of a feather that can into view, then, having become disillusioned by some of the things I experienced in the birding world over the years, I transitioned into a birdwatcher, hoping to rediscover the joy I once found in watching birds without the politics, pettiness, and cults of personality that put me off birding. However modern life in America and its responsibilities, as it does, tends to get in the way of such things, and my birdwatching activities dwindled into near non-existence.
After a few months of rising early every morning for a walk up and down the hills near my home, Spring began to arrive and with it more bird activity. Soon, each morning as I was crossing the bridge across the South Fork of Scappoose Creek, I began to hear the easy-to-remember “Fitz-Bew!” call of the Willow Flycatcher. Similarly, on the slog up the hill back home, the BREEeeer” of the Western Wood-Pewee began to be heard each day. However as I dutifully entered these into eBird each day, it occurred to me that other than the Olive-sided Flycatcher (“Quick! Three beers!”) these two daily walk companions were the only flycatchers sufficiently familiar to me to identify by call.
Fortunately about this time, a copy of Prof. Cin-ty Lee‘s new Field Guide to North American Flycatchers: Kingbirds and Myiarchus arrived. Knowing that his 2023 published Field Guide to North American Flycatchers: Empidonax and Pewees was still languishing on the slopes of Mt. To-be-read, I donned my climbing gear and ascended the north face to retrieve it so that I could read them both together in an effort to expand my understanding and field-craft skills pertaining to the identification of these notoriously tricky, little (well, often, at least) birds.
Now I’ll admit, the joke has been made – by me, if I’m honest – that just for a giggle a field guide to the Empidonax flycatchers could be published using only a single illustration for all species but with text that insisted at great length in each case that there were differences which could be seen in the field if observed with sufficient diligence. As most who have tried to puzzle out these little birds when they are not vocalizing will attest, one of these little grey birds could be perched in the middle of ten illuminated red arrows each one pointing to a particular differentiating field mark and it still wouldn’t make the first bit of difference.
However under the careful textual tutelage of Prof. Lee, ably assisted by the detailed illustrations of Andrew Birch (illustrations being key here as photographs simply wouldn’t do justice to providing a visual re-enforcement of what the good professor was explaining), I began to understand how the acquisition of a genuine ability to identify these birds in the field requires a more extensive amount of knowledge about them than is needed to achieve a commensurate level of skill in identifying many other bird species. A comprehensive approach is needed; information regarding appearance, vocalization, range, and behavior all must be ready-in-hand (and ideally ready-in-mind) for the most successful results to be achieved.
Prof. Lee’s approach in these two books follows just such a comprehensive approach. Each volume begins with a general overview, first of the book itself and then of the topography of the North American occurring genera included in it. This is then followed by variations on a theme between the two books. In the Empidonax and Pewees volume, the two covered genera are grouped together, with discussions of each species following the pattern of general introduction, voice, range and habitat, and similar species. Colour illustrations, range maps, charts, and sonograms are included for each species here as well. In the Kingbirds and Myiarchus volume, the topography section is followed by an introduction to each included genus itself, beginning with Myiarchus, after which each species in that genus is examined individually, following the pattern of general introduction, vocalizations, habitat, distribution and seasonal status, and similar species. As with the first, volume, colour illustrations, range maps, charts, and sonograms for each species are included in these species profiles.
Wisely, Prof Lee follows a theme of holistic identification of the Empidonax and Pewees volume – in fact, he explains succinctly why he has done so (and rightly, I might add) in the very first two paragraphs of the “How To Use This Guide” introductory section. These birds are notoriously difficult to distinguish one from another visually, and even adding in the vocalizations alone often still leaves much room for error. In the Kingbirds and Myiarchus volume, where – thanks to the fact that each species evolved looking sufficiently different to a level that it is actually noticeable, generally at least, in the field – the observer actually has a hope of a chance when using more traditional sight and sound techniques, the holistic method is not so heavily emphasized, however the enormous potential vagrancy ranges somewhat take center stage instead as the most significant challenge in the identification of these species. Case in point, the Tropical Kingbird, (Tyrannus melancholicus), has a regular range boundary that at its northernmost barely crosses the border between the United States and Mexico, but has a potential autumn and winter vagrancy range as far up the Pacific Coast as British Columbia (I have myself seen them on repeated occasions on the northernmost Oregon coast, being astonished each time I did), and eastward from the Great Plains to the Atlantic Coast as far north as the Canadian Maritime provinces.
I’m pleased to report that Prof. Lee’s system works. The information guidance he has provided in these two books is almost entirely sufficient to bring one into a comprehensive competency in identifying the birds covered. You might notice that I included the word “almost.” It’s not that Prof. Lee overlooked or neglected anything that was possible in the them, and indeed, his inclusion of extensive sonogram images of their vocalizations go as far as can be gone in conveying the vocalizations that are so necessary to identify many of the species in the field. However even if one is familiar with reading such visual depictions of sound, I would recommend making use of the audio resources available on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds website or their Merlin mobile phone app to hear the calls and songs that the included sonograms represent. Play the calls in combination with studying the images so that the two media begin to join together in your mind. In this way, when afield, the sonograms will serve as reminders of which vocalizations follow which patterns.
For anyone interested in improving their field identification skills of North American flycatchers, both the Field Guide to North American Flycatchers Empidonax and Pewees, and Kingbirds and Myiarchus should be considered both essential reading as well as worthy field reference books. Spend some time with them before going afield and then take them along if you expect to will need to puzzle out flycatchers in your adventures (particularly members of the Empidonax genus). What Prof. Lee and Mr. Birch have provided to the birdwatching and natural history communities deserves high praise indeed. Ensuring that their work is read, employed, and recommended are three of the best ways to seeing to that they receive due recognition for it.
Title: Field Guide to North American Flycatchers: Empidonax and Pewees
Author: Cin-Ty Lee
Illustrator: Andrew Birch
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Format: field-quality softcover
Pages: 168 pp., 55 color + b/w illus. 19 maps. 53 spectrograms
ISBN: 9780691240626,
Published: April (U.S.) / May (U.K.) 2023
Title: Field Guide to North American Flycatchers: Kingbirds and Myiarchus
Author: Cin-Ty Lee
Illustrator: Andrew Birch
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Format: field-quality softcover
Pages: 192 pp., 56 color + 18 b/w illus. 17 maps. 51 spectrograms
ISBN: 9780691240640
Published: April (U.S.) / June (U.K.) 2024
As always, this review was produced without the use of AI tools in either the researching or writing of it.
In accordance with Federal Trade Commission 16 CFR Part 255, it is disclosed that the copy of the book read in order to produce this review was provided gratis to the reviewer by the publisher.
