MAINE SUNDAY TELEGRAM • January 2, 2022
Fifty years ago, two field guides dominated the North American market, guides by Roger Peterson and Chan Robbins. The National Geographic Guide, first published in 1983, covered all of the birds of North America. Then a guide by David Sibley upped the ante with the number of plumages shown in marvelous plates and its thorough coverage. My first binoculars were bulky, Bushnell binoculars. The image pales in comparison to the binoculars used by birders today. A game-changer was the emergence of Kowa spotting scopes with much larger objective lenses. Fifty years ago, I cherished my two-disk set of LP records on eastern bird sounds, put out by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Today the Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds and Xeno-Canto websites host thousands of recordings, available to anyone. In the early 1970s we had telephone trees. Now, email and social media make it easy to get up-to-the minute info on rare birds. The rise of eBird has provided huge benefits. Lastly, digital photography has been a boon to providing solid evidence of correct bird identifications. ~ Herb Wilson