Date: Thu, 1 May 2003 18:21:43 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: "Laura M. Appelbaum" Subject: Thanks a lot! (Sibley) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Curses! Or as they say in Iraq, "a curse be upon your moustache!" Thanks to the numerous insensitive remarks here in the last day such as "the new Sibley East Field Guide is out" and "they have copies at ANS" I was forced, yes, forced, to drive out to Chevy Chase and expend $19.95 (less member discount, plus tax) on this piece of masticated tree pulp! Don't you people *know* I can't resist bookish temptations? Don't you *know* there is no more room on any of the five shelves in my living room already devoted to field guides? What were you *thinking*? What a lot of nerve you have, all of you! ;D Okay, now that I'm done with the phony tirade, here's what I think upon first cursory perusal. The good: 1. Size and weight rock! Or rather, they no longer resemble a glacial erratic. This is good because the task of carrying the full-size Sibley was not something I liked to do, so my husband will now be very happy. 2. Same great pictures, nice new text focusing on field marks, diagnostic behavior, voice. 3. I haven't read alot of the text yet, but I'll assume it's good throughout. The bad: 1. Having all the text on the same page as the pictures in contrast to on facing pages as in my well worn Peterson's means the pictures are really, really small, especially for raptors and ducks where pictures of birds in flight are featured along with the standing/perching illustrations. At that size, none of the detail the large Sibley is reknowned for really matters, because you can't see it. 2. The lack of "backgrounds" whether descriptive or merely colored, means that some of the white birds, like the gulls, egrets and swans, virtually disappear on the page. This is just a dumb publishing choice -- how hard would it have been to drop a light screen of blue behind the illustrations? 3. The lack of thumb indicies (I don't count those itty-bitty grey squares at the very top of the pages) mean it's going to be extremely difficult to flip to the correct page quickly, which is one of the main reasons I still, all these field guides later, never go into the field without Peterson's -- remember when they used to sell those special dot tabs you could stick on the edges of the pages?) The other is that if you are an idiot like I am when it comes to IDing birds you don't see in your backyard, like warblers, having a full page showing five different streaked yellow warblers was/is a big advantage still, of Peterson's. 4. I don't like having the bird pictures in the gutter on the left-hand page -- it means you have to crack the book all the way open to see them, which wwe all know is not something you want to do in inclement weather. It would have been so simple to fix this by simply having a mirror-image arrangement on the left hand pages to the ones on the right. Now, to hope forecasts of rain this weekend are wrong so I can go field-test it! Laura Appelbaum Cloverly, MD ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================