Birder’s Handbook Introduction

image\ebx_384069431.gif The Birder's Handbook is one of today's most popular references and one of our favorites.

Approximately 95% of the original edition is included. What we didn't include were the references and everything from the Appendices to the end of the book. Those who are interested are urged to purchase a copy —it's a fine addition to any birder's library, whether it's made of paper or electrons!

How to Use this Online Book

The Birder’s Handbook is included in this program as a Microsoft Windows Help File. It follows the same conventions as the Help file that comes with most Windows-based applications. If you are not familiar with Windows Help files, read the following section.

Help File Fundamentals

Help files display information in pieces called topics, which are similar to a chapter. The first topic you see when you open (or run) this Help file is the Book Cover, with a green jump to the Table of Contents or "Contents" for short, from which you jump to this Introduction. This works like a normal Table of Contents, except that instead of each topic referring to page numbers, they are colored GREEN—these are "Hypertext" phrases—click one with your mouse and the Help file will jump to that topic. At any time, click the Back button (at top left) to return to the page you last saw, and repeat to visit previously viewed pages. There is no Forward button as in browsers.

In each "book" shown on the left panel, you can click the first topic and then browse through topics using the "Browse" buttons near the top of the window ("<<" and ">>"). If a topic is long and will not fit on the screen, you will see a "Horizontal Scroll Bar" on the right side of the window. To move the text up or down, click on the arrows, click inside the gray area of the scroll bar, or drag the scroll box ( the little square button between the two arrows).

If you want to find a bird by its English or Latin name, click the Index tab near the top of the left pane of the window. Click a name to jump to it. If you want a really detailed search for a word within all text, click the Search tab and follow the dialog box instructions for building a "find" file.

When you want to exit or close the Help file, choose Exit from the File menu, or click the X box in the upper right corner of the Help window.

If you have other questions about using Help, press F1 while displaying any topic.

Introduction from Ehrlich, Dobkin, and Wheye

How often have you come across a bird on a spring morning and stood motionless in an effort to determine what it was doing; to see whether it was near its nest, and if so, what kind of nest it built, or to see why it was holding its tail in an unusual position? Have you wondered what it ate, how many mates it had, how many eggs would occupy its nest, how long it would take them to hatch, or how helpless its hatchlings would be? While there are excellent field guides to help identify that bird, none provide comprehensive information on what it is doing, and why.

The Birder's Handbook takes up where the others leave off—that is once you have identified a bird. First, you can refer to an up-to-date condensed description of the biology of the species you have in view, and then you can read two or three brief essays which expand on that information and fit your bird into "the big picture" of avian ecology, behavior, and evolution. As you become familiar with this format, you will find that it also serves as a guide to what is not known about the biology of North American birds. We have indicated where, by making careful observations, you can contribute to the science of ornithology (see Observing and Recording Bird Biology)

The Birder's Handbook: A Field Guide to the Natural History of North American Birds includes all bird species (some 650 of them) known to nest regularly on the continent, north of the Mexican border (with the exception of some exotic species that have escaped from captivity) and all the now-extinct birds known to have nested here since the arrival of Europeans.

Short synopses, called "species treatments," describe the biology of individual species arranged in the same order as the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) most recent arrangement. At the end of each species treatment you will find a list of essays giving especially pertinent background material.

The essays vary in length and cover important and interesting biological topics—how flamingos feed, how different species of warblers divide hunting areas in conifer trees, how species are formed, how raptors can be conserved, why shorebirds sometimes stand on one foot, why birds rub themselves with ants, how migrating birds find their way, why the Passenger Pigeon became extinct, what determines how often hummingbirds feed, and what duck displays mean, just to name a few of the numerous topics addressed. Also included is a series of biographical sketches of bird biologists who have made important contributions to understanding our birds, and some notes on the origins and meanings of North American bird names.

We have attempted to condense the information that otherwise can be found only in a library of ornithological books and journals. To achieve compactness we have had to use a highly condensed format for the presentation of data on the species treated. It therefore is important to read the section, "How to Use This Book," so that the information will be readily accessible to you when birding.