A Sibley Home Companion
INTERVIEW BY MIYOKO CHU
David Sibley on his latest book  

Wilson's Storm-Petrel Illustrations and captions by David Allen Sibley from the National Audubon Society: The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior (Knopf, 2001) Copyright © 2001 by David Allen Sibley and Chanticleer Press, Inc

Birdscope editor Miyoko Chu spoke with David Sibley from his home in Concord, Massachusetts.

Miyoko: When did you conceive of the idea to put together a guide to bird life and behavior?

David Sibley Carolynne Bailey

David: The idea of a companion volume for a field guide is something I've been thinking about for a long, long time - probably since I was a teenager. In my late teens I wanted to do a book on the warblers of North America - an illustrated identification guide that would also include all the information on breeding biology, migration, molt, voice, every aspect of birds. I later realized it would actually work better as two books, a field guide concise and compact enough to be carried in the field and a companion guide containing all the other information people would be interested in reading at home.

Miyoko: Now you've produced both books, for all North American birds. What would you like The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior to do for readers?

David: It's like a portable field trip leader who gives people bits of interesting information to help them appreciate birds and enhance their birding experience. You can turn to some books, such as The Birder's Handbook or Kenn Kaufman's Lives of North American Birds to look up individual species. What was missing was a book that would give more of an overview so that people could read about whole groups of birds. For example, most birds in a family lay four or five eggs but one species lays fewer, and here's why. We summarized and interpreted the information, explained behaviors, and included the interesting exceptions in each family.

Miyoko: Your new book has more than 795 color illustrations but it was published only one year after your field guide. When did you have time to do all of the illustrations?

David: I started on the companion guide only after I had finished the field guide. It took a year to do the 400 or 500 new illustrations. We reproduced others from the field guide.

Miyoko: How did the process of illustrating this book compare with illustrating the field guide?

Aggressive encounter between Ruby-crowned Kinglets.

David: The illustrations for the field guide required detailed attention using photosand sketches, trying to get exactly the right markings and colors. For the companion guide, it was a really nice break to be able to play around with lighting and arrange the composition of birds within each vignette, to be able to treat the birds as part of a painting.

Miyoko: Now that you've finished two monumental books, what's your next major project?

David: I'm working on a relatively small book of about 120 pages or so. It's a how-to guide to bird identification that talks about things like how to find birds, how to look for motion, how light and weather can play tricks.

Miyoko: Who would have more fun going birding with you - someone who likes to see a lot of different birds and move on, or someone who likes to sit around and watch?

David: My style is definitely sitting and watching. Someone might organize a bird walk and ask me to lead it for one or two miles. Well, two hours might go by and we'd only be a quarter of a mile from where we started and have to turn around and go back to the car. I'm convinced that I see just as many birds as people who spend their time hiking. And by spending less time walking, I have more time for lifting my binoculars and looking at birds.

In this series of illustrations a Red-headed Woodpecker takes one "step" up a tree. First the body leans in toward the trunk, taking pressure off the tail. Then a strong push with both legs together moves the body up in a vertical "jump," and the legs quickly swing up to grip the trunk again as the body settles back to rest on the tail.

Miyoko: What do you appreciate most about the lives of birds?

David: The migration of birds has always captured my imagination, the cyclical back and forth movement that really goes on all year long with different species. I grew up and did most of my early bird watching in the East, where I experienced the excitement of seeing the seasons change, every week or every day bringing different birds. The same little patch of woods or marsh can suddenly be home to whole flocks of birds that weren't there the day before or to visitors from hundreds of miles away.

Miyoko: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
David: I'd like to say something about bird conservation: it's my great hope that the field guide and companion guide will make birds more accessible and interesting. I hope they will give people more insight into the lives of birds so that they will not only appreciate birds but also care about saving them.