Bird Documentation in the Digital Age: A Bird in the Book

The practice of birding is currently undergoing major changes in response to technological changes. These changes include both the introduction of new types of technology as well as new modes of using existing technologies. These changes can be disorienting; while some birders are happy to adopt any new gadget that comes along, others see no reason to change their proven ways of doing things. Somewhere between the "social media will save the world" and "social media is a faddish waste of time" schools lies the truth, and it's impossible for us to totally grasp that truth, caught up in the historical moment of change as we are. What we can do is look back at a previous world-changing technological shift in the practice of birding: the shift from collecting birds with guns to looking at birds with binoculars. The tried-and-true ways we may now want to keep were once themselves novel and suspect to the old school.

There are several good histories of the time period covered by this change (Barrow [1998] is more academic, while Weidensaul [2007] is aimed at a general audience), but the way I'm going to tackle this topic is by looking at how this technological shift altered the language of bird descriptions found in books intended to guide bird students. These identification guides set forth the basic criteria by which a bird student could determine the identity of a bird. Although the technology by which observations were made changed (shotgun vs. binoculars), the technology that helped bird students understand what they were observing (the printed book) did not. What did change in these guides was the graphic presentation of the information and the language used to describe the identification criteria for birds.

Enough generalities, let's start by comparing a couple of descriptions of the same species, from Shriner (1896) and Peterson (1980). Shriner goes first:

"Length, twelve and a half inches; extent, twenty inches; general color above, blue slate; feathers of the head long and pointed, forming a conspicuous crest, bluish slate, centered with black; the inner tail feathers have an irregular black stripe down the middle, the rest are black, with slaty blue edges, all are more or less spotted with white; long wing feathers, black, with the basal portion white and a few white spots on some of the outer webs; color of under surface of the body, white, with a broad slaty blue band across the breast, while the sides of the body are slaty with white bars; the white of the throat extends around on the back of the neck, forming a more or less complete collar, and there is a white spot in front of the eye and another just below it; some individuals have white dots on the upper surface of the wings, and in certain plumages the slaty breast band is suffused with rusty; the bill is two inches long, strong, sharp-pointed, and black, excepting near the base of the lower part of the tip, where it is of a horn color; the wings are marked with small specks of white; legs, extremely short, of a dirty yellow color, above the knee bare of feathers for half an inch; the two exterior toes are united together for nearly their whole length; claws, stout and black. The female has a reddish brown band across the under side of the body below the slaty breast band, while the sides of the body are also of this color." Paragraphs on nesting habits (including description of the eggs), distribution, and diet ("exclusively fish") follow.

Now here's Peterson:

"Hovering on rapidly beating wings in readiness for the plunge, or flying with uneven wingbeats (as if changing gear), rattling as it goes, the Kingfisher is easily recognized. Perched, it is big-headed and big-billed, larger than a Robin, blue-gray above, with a ragged bushy crest and a broad gray breastband. The female has an additional rusty breastband." Single sentences on Voice, Range, a reference to the eastern range map, and Habitat follow.

There are obvious differences in length between these two descriptions. Shriner's description includes more details than Peterson's, first giving measurements, then plumage colors in detail, followed by structural details such as the bill and feet. Nowhere is behavior mentioned (there is no reference to "hovering" in his discussion). This description is clearly intended for a bird student with the bird in hand and enough leisure to note fine points such as the black centers to the head feathers and white spots on the outer webs of the flight feathers. The description in its list-like structure portrays the bird as a collection of parts that are given equal weight.

Peterson, by contrast, writes of the bird in motion, describing its feeding and flight behavior. The only color notes are the general "blue-gray above," "broad gray breastband" and description of the female's rusty breastband. On one hand, there's no need for Peterson to describe the bird in further color detail since a color plate of both male and female kingfishers is on the page facing the text (Shriner has a black and white photo of a taxidermist's mount of several kingfishers). Even so, the emphasis is on what the bird is likely to be doing when a bird student finds it rather than what it looks like. Rather than listing the structural features as independent items, as Shriner does, Peterson unites them in the succinct phrase, "big-headed and big-billed," pulling the big picture out of the details. The details that Peterson uses are chosen carefully, with the most prominent ones highlighted and others discarded from the description entirely.

Two different descriptions of the same species are, of course, a very small study sample, but I suspect a larger study would arrive at similar findings.

Bird books from the transitional period between shotguns and bins (think the 1920s-1930s) tend to try to cover both bases. Forbush (1925-1929) included both descriptions and field marks. Bagg and Eliot (1937) listed details of sight observations that today we would pass off without discussion, but that still did not satisfy people like Ludlow Griscom (Davis 1994). Stone (1964) expressed concern about sight records and their reliability, but also had this to say:

"No descriptions of the birds are presented as everyone interested in bird study today possesses one or more manuals for identification. There are, however, many comments on the appearance of birds in the field, of the deceptive effect of light and shadow upon coloration and the relative value of field characters. Even these are perhaps unnecessary in view of the appearance, after most of the 'studies' had been written, of Roger Peterson's admirable 'Field Guide to the Birds,' but so intimately are they associated with other parts of the text that it seemed best to allow them to stand."

We will return to description as a basic part of bird documentation later in this series, but this is its birthplace: when specimens were not always available but records of noteworthy observations needed to be kept.

In the next post in this series, we will return the present and look at the falling cost of bird photography.

Bagg, Aaron Clark, & Samuel Atkins Eliot, Jr. 1937. Birds of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts. Hampshire Bookshop, Northampton, MA.

Barrow, Mark, Jr. 1998. A Passion for Birds: American Ornithology After Audubon. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

Davis, William E., Jr. 1994. Dean of the Birdwatchers: A Biography of Ludow Griscom. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC.

Forbush, Edward Howe. 1925-1929. Birds of Massachusetts and Other New England States. Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Norwood, MA.

Peterson, Roger Tory. 1980. A Field Guide to the Birds. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA.

Shriner, Charles A. 1896. The Birds of New Jersey. Fish & Game Commission of the State of New Jersey, [Patterson, NJ].

Weidensaul, Scott. 2007. Of a Feather: A Brief History of American Birding. Harcourt, Orlando, FL.

Previously in this series:

Introduction

What Is a Bird Record?

Bird Documentation in the Digital Age: What Is a Bird Record?

Philadelphia Centennial Bird Exhibit
Originally uploaded by Smithsonian Institution

"Whenever I think seriously about why I love notebooks I'm reminded of those cave walls covered in drawings of game by our Neolithic ancestors. Bison, deer and horses gallop across their subterranean galleries in exuberant patterns of charcoal and ochre....They are precious documents about our past, but also about our present condition, since their unconscious beauty finds its echo - if not a direct lineal descendant - in the birder's notebook." (Cocker 2001)

In the beginning, there was a bird.

Some time afterward, there was a human being that wanted to tell other human beings about a bird. This would have been long before any form of written language was invented, so speech was the likely medium (though birds also appear in cave and rock art, of course). Since speech tends to be ephemeral unless it is written down or it persists in a carefully-maintained oral tradition, those earliest bird reports are lost to us today. This is unfortunate, since they would doubtlessly be very interesting.

An encounter between a bird and a human observer is a unique experience. A bird report is the result of that unique experience being translated into a form that allows it to be communicated to people that did not participate in the original experience. That translation is often made with the help of technology. The type of technology used in the translation process inevitably affects the final form of the report (for example, a written description of a bird and a photograph of a bird are very different from each other, even if they report the same individual bird). Technology may affect the circumstances of the observation as well.

The distinction between a bird report and a bird record is subtle but significant. A bird record is a bird report that has been examined and approved by a person or agency with the authority to designate what is accurate and what is not. Various entities claim this authority; the claims of ornithologists and bird records committees are widely accepted by the birding community and others, but any individual can claim a similar authority (whether that claim is honored by others is another matter entirely). To complicate matters further, different authorities may have different criteria for considering a report to be a record.

Both bird reports and records become part of the avian historical record, although a bird record has more status than a report. A basic criterion for a bird record is that there is sufficient information available for future reseachers to review the evidence for a claimed observation and draw their own conclusions. In other words, though current authorities do the best they can in terms of designating accuracy, there is an acknowledgement that future generations may make different designations. Future researchers may even look at observations currently considered to be reports and upgrade them to being records (or vice versa).

To boil it all down to the essentials, the process of turning a bird report into a bird record is the process of turning an anecdote into a data point.

What you just read (if you are still with me) is an idealized version of a stable situation. Technological and social change (which are often entwined with each other) tend to throw such ideals into chaos until a new status quo appears. We are currently living through one of these periods of technological and social change, but the next post in this series will look back at a previous shift: the transition from a shotgun to binoculars as the must-have tool for a bird student.

Cocker, Mark. 2001. Birders: Tales of a Tribe. Atlantic Monthly Press.

Previously in this series:

Introduction

Bird Documentation in the Digital Age: Introduction

At the beginning of this year, two Ivory Gulls appeared in eastern Massachusetts. Since both birds stayed for a while, crowds of birders got to see them; not only local birders but twitchers from far away. I was among the twitchers, as two friends and I made a memorable day trip to Plymouth and saw the bird. By the time we went for the bird, many photos had been posted online to Flickr and other sites, and many of those photos were taken at invitingly close range. When we were there, however, the gull stayed out on the jetty and even farther out in Plymouth Harbor. We did get to see it, though, and it was a lifer for all of us.

Once I got home, I knew I should be a good birding citizen and submit a writeup on the bird to MARC, the Massachusetts Avian Records Committee. As usual, however, I didn't get to it as soon as I wanted and several weeks passed before I e-mailed a description taken from my field notes to the MARC Secretary. The reply I got startled me: I was informed that I was the only person who had submitted written details on the bird up to that point. Granted, with such wonderful photos so easily available, MARC's acceptance of the record was unlikely to hang on my details, but I would have assumed that somebody else, somewhere, would have written some sort of description (and perhaps someone has, in the long interim between my submission and the writing of this post).

The process of bird documentation has undergone a sea-change since I started birding. This begins a series of posts intended to examine this phenomenon in more detail: where we've been and where we're going, and some of the issues that have arisen as a result. Although documentation of rarities may seem like an uncommon situation to many birders, I see that kind of documentation as the tip of the iceberg that is really how we as birders record all birds that we observe.

Next: What, exactly, is a bird record?

The photo that illustrates this post was taken by Jason Forbes in Plymouth on 24 January 2009 (the day I was there) and is under a Creative Commons license. Jason's blog is Brewster's Linnet and he also has a Flickr stream.

Metaphysicality

So, what exactly counts as physical evidence when reporting a bird sighting? The dead bird itself (aka, a specimen) is an obvious choice, but does any other form of what we often call "physical evidence" have a similar degree of "reality"? That is the question that Rick Wright takes up in a recent post from Aimophila Adventures. I've got to say that an apprentice librarian such as myself ought to be able to come up with some trenchant arguments on this question, but unfortunately it usually takes me a while to come up with my trenchant arguments. So, in the meantime, I'll refer you to the original post.

Artistic Forensics: The Case of the Carbonated Swamp-Warbler

Among the many birds painted by John James Audubon, a few have never been conclusively matched with species known today. These mystery birds have caused speculation among ornithologists and birders for decades, and now David Sibley has entered the fray. Although the Carbonated Swamp-Warbler is not known to have been a NJ bird (and this post is therefore an extralimital one), this post on the Sibley Guides Notebook blog is worth the time of anyone interested in birding history or bird art (the comments on the post are interesting reading, as well). Matters such as plumage details, artistic style, printing technology and observer reputation are brought up by Sibley and the commenters.

OT: Bird Drawing

Anyone who has been a birder for a while inevitably develops certain specialties; favorite groups of birds, favorite methods of recording sightings, favorite offshoots of birding... As you can guess from this blog, one of my interests is the history of birds and bird study. Another one is bird art. That's probably unavoidable for someone who has been drawing and doodling since she could hold a writing implement, and who also majored in Art History in college. Bird art ranges from quick sketches made in the field to document sightings to finished artwork in many media by a host of skilled artists.

Even in this day of digiscoping, drawing is an excellent way of observing, documenting and learning birds. Unfortunately, relatively few birders do it. There are various reasons for this, but one is that many of us are taught that art is the province of the talented few. In fact, getting started in field sketching takes one thing: getting started. Talent helps, but just making time and space to practice drawing will take you a long way.

I found this post at Drawing the Motmot via The Birdchaser. It's an approachable recipe for getting started in drawing. This other post at Getting Things Done in Academia expands on the original post, and talks about why drawing is a useful skill for scientists to have. I recommend both posts to anyone who wants to try field sketching.