In the spirit of the season I wrote this story. Maybe a little something to liven up the down time with no birds around, enjoy.
Petersons Guiding Hand Jeff Price, copyright 2003, all rights reserved Annie focused her binoculars on the bird foraging in the tree overhead. It was smallish, yellow but not bright yellow and had a small pointed bill - a bird that should be easy to identify. Sitting on a rock, she pulled out her field guide. Turning to the pages with the yellow birds, she started looking through the photos - not that one, nope, that ones not right, thats not it either. Pretty soon she came to the end of the section and the bird she saw was just not there - none of the birds looked right. Frustrated, she threw the book down. It skittered across the trail and down a small slope, disappearing from sight. Serves you right, she muttered. Annie really wanted to learn the names of the birds she was seeing. Noting her interest in birds, her parents had given her binoculars and the field guide for her birthday. It took a while to learn to use the binoculars but she could mostly find the birds and focus on them now. Identifying them was another story. She thought it would be easy - the photographs were so good, surely she could identify these birds. Instead it had been frustrating; most of the birds she saw didnt look quite like the birds in the photos. Other times, shed spend so much time trying to find the bird in the book that when she looked back up to check a field mark the bird would be gone. She couldnt help saying to herself, I wish there was someone who could help me. Sighing, she stood up and walked across the trail to look for her field guide. It hadnt fallen very far so she was able to reach down and pick it up. It was then that she noticed there was another book a little farther down, under a bush. Scrambling down the hillside she picked up this book and looked it over. The green cover was very worn and looked like it had been well used. Turning it over she read the text A Field Guide to the Birds with the word Peterson and a drawing of a bird underneath. Annie flipped through the pages. There were paintings of birds, not photographs, and only some of the pictures were in color. Thats odd she thought, how could anyone identify a bird from these pictures? Wanting to reunite the book with its owner she looked at the front to see if they had written their name inside. There was a signature on the title page - Roger Tory Peterson. Annie decided to see if she could find her bird in this book. She started flipping the pages and a strange thing happened - a bunch of pages turned at once and she was looking at a picture near the back of the book. Most of the other birds on the page were indistinct, but the bird she saw, a female American Goldfinch, was much brighter and had little arrows pointing out the things she should be looking for. She sat on the ground and picked up her field guide. Looking up American Goldfinch in the index she turned to the page - that didnt look anything at all like what she saw! Looking at the text she read that the photo was a male and the text said females are duller. A lot of good that does - why dont they show both birds? Annie headed home idly thumbing through the pages of the Peterson field guide. She could see the benefit of having both males and females marked, they often looked so different. She also began to appreciate how the little arrows might make it easier to identify the birds. The next day, Annie started out early to see how many birds she could identify. At first she used her field guide. Time after time she had trouble finding a photo that looked like the bird she was seeing. Placing her field guide in her pack she took out the Peterson instead. Every time she found a bird shed open the book and it would be right there. No matter what she did, the only pages that would open would be the one that had a picture of the bird she was seeing on it. Not only that, the features of the bird would be highlighted. It was like Mr. Peterson himself was helping her learn how to identify the birds. After a few weeks of using Petersons field guide, Annie noticed that the pages werent stuck together as much. True, the book would open to a bird that looked like what she was seeing but sometimes it would also open to other birds that looked like that too. She quickly learned how to look at these similar birds and determine how they differed and what the correct identification was. She had even started to learn how to tell the different groups of birds apart. Over time, Annie got better and better at identifying the birds. She didnt even need to look up many of them; she had already memorized what they looked like and what their names were. As her ability to identify the birds grew so did her appreciation of their beauty and of the nature around her. Then one day Annie found a bird she didnt recognize. Pulling out her Peterson field guide, it didnt open to the species, or even to a group of species - all of the pages turned just like they would in a normal book. Still, she was quickly able to turn to the right page in the book and identify the species. She knew that she had finally learned how to identify the birds. Smiling, she put the field guide back in her pack and headed home. When she got there she discovered that the book was gone. Annie went back and searched all the places it could possibly have fallen out but the book was nowhere to be found. Sad at first, she turned and headed back. As she walked she grew very appreciative of all the things Mr. Peterson had taught her - not only how to identify the birds but also how to appreciate the natural world around her. Annie could always buy another field guide, but she would miss her personal guide to the bird life. If youre a beginning birder, frustrated over not being able to identify the birds youre seeing, cheer up and start looking around you. Maybe you can find Annies lost field guide and have Mr. Peterson introduce you to the wonders of nature. ===== Jeff Price Boulder, CO [email protected] __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com
