Chuck Otte's advice on Bird Guide books

Here is what Chuck Otte wrote about field guides.

I´m a big fan of books especially bird books. The one in the center is a very well used first edition Sibley. On the right is an equally well used 2nd edition
National Geographic. On the left is a second printing (1939) of the first edition Roger Tory Peterson groundbreaking field guide to birds of the
eastern US. (This was a gift from a friend purchased from a used book store in Topeka. It´s signed by the author and was the property of LB Carson, one
of the founding members of KOS and the first treasurer for several years.)        

But I digress. When I first started birding I was 4 years old. When I started to read a few years later I would spend hours going through the only three field
guides that most birders owned: Peterson east and west edition and the Golden Guide guide to birds. In the early 1960s, that was pretty much the
choices. I would look at the pages of illustrations and try to memorize them all. I would read the text corresponding to each illustration. I remember
Peterson´s writing at the start of Ivory-billed Woodpecker species account, "On verge of extinction if not extinct." Chilling words. I see lots of newer
birders stumbling around trying to match up what they are seeing with a photo on a phone. I´ve seen a lot of folks go down very wrong roads of
identification using this method. Being good at bird ID takes time and study. There aren´t shortcuts even with today´s technology. By spending time in
evenings and whenever just slowly leafing through a field guide you start to understand the subtle difference between. vireos and warblers beaks and
body structures. You can stare at the illustrations (or photos, depending on the field guide) and begin to wonder if you´ll ever be able to differentiate any
of the Empidonax flycatchers. Which field guide? Field guides, like binoculars and shoes, need to be tried on. Go to a book store and pick up,a copy of
Sibley, or Kaufman or Nat Geo and just flip,through them and see which one you like best. Some will say that field guides are out of date. I disagree. It´s
easier, for me, to flip through pages of a book than to scroll endless screens on a phone. But maybe that´s because I´ve been doing it for most of my life. If
you own filled guides, spend time browsing through them. Pick a family and study that family. Take time to read all the pages BEFORE the pictures of the
birds. There´s a phenomenal wealth of information in those pages.
If you don´t have a field guide, please consider getting one.