[mou] A Halloween Treat (essay)

[Jeff Price]

In the spirit of the season I wrote this story. Maybe
a little something to liven up the down time with no
birds around, enjoy.

Peterson’s Guiding Hand
Jeff Price, copyright 2003, all rights reserved

Annie focused her binoculars on the bird foraging in
the tree overhead.  It was smallish, yellow but not
bright yellow and had a small pointed bill - a bird
that should be easy to identify.  Sitting on a rock,
she pulled out her field guide.  Turning to the pages
with the yellow birds, she started looking through the
photos - not that one, nope, that one’s not right,
that’s not it either.  Pretty soon she came to the end
of the section and the bird she saw was just not there
- none of the birds looked right.  Frustrated, she
threw the book down.  It skittered across the trail
and down a small slope, disappearing from sight. 
“Serves you right,” she muttered.  Annie really wanted
to learn the names of the birds she was seeing.  

Noting her interest in birds, her parents had given
her binoculars and the field guide for her birthday. 
It took a while to learn to use the binoculars but she
could mostly find the birds and focus on them now. 
Identifying them was another story. She thought it
would be easy - the photographs were so good, surely
she could identify these birds.  Instead it had been
frustrating; most of the birds she saw didn’t look
quite like the birds in the photos.  Other times,
she’d spend so much time trying to find the bird in
the book that when she looked back up to check a field
mark the bird would be gone. She couldn’t help saying
to herself, “I wish there was someone who could help
me.” 

Sighing, she stood up and walked across the trail to
look for her field guide.  It hadn’t fallen very far
so she was able to reach down and pick it up.  It was
then that she noticed there was another book a little
farther down, under a bush.  Scrambling down the
hillside she picked up this book and looked it over. 
The green cover was very worn and looked like it had
been well used.  Turning it over she read the text ‘A
Field Guide to the Birds’ with the word ‘Peterson’ and
a drawing of a bird underneath.  Annie flipped through
the pages. There were paintings of birds, not
photographs, and only some of the pictures were in
color.  That’s odd she thought, how could anyone
identify a bird from these pictures?  Wanting to
reunite the book with its owner she looked at the
front to see if they had written their name inside. 
There was a signature on the title page - Roger Tory
Peterson.

Annie decided to see if she could find her bird in
this book.  She started flipping the pages and a
strange thing happened - a bunch of pages turned at
once and she was looking at a picture near the back of
the book.  Most of the other birds on the page were
indistinct, but the bird she saw, a female American
Goldfinch, was much brighter and had little arrows
pointing out the things she should be looking for.

She sat on the ground and picked up her field guide. 
Looking up American Goldfinch in the index she turned
to the page - that didn’t look anything at all like
what she saw!  Looking at the text she read that the
photo was a male and the text said ‘females are
duller’.  A lot of good that does - why don’t they
show both birds?  Annie headed home idly thumbing
through the pages of the Peterson field guide.  She
could see the benefit of having both males and females
marked, they often looked so different.  She also
began to appreciate how the little arrows might make
it easier to identify the birds.  

The next day, Annie started out early to see how many
birds she could identify.  At first she used ‘her’
field guide.  Time after time she had trouble finding
a photo that looked like the bird she was seeing. 
Placing her field guide in her pack she took out the
Peterson instead.  Every time she found a bird she’d
open the book and it would be right there.  No matter
what she did, the only pages that would open would be
the one that had a picture of the bird she was seeing
on it.  Not only that, the features of the bird would
be highlighted.  It was like Mr. Peterson himself was
helping her learn how to identify the birds.

After a few weeks of using Peterson’s field guide,
Annie noticed that the pages weren’t stuck together as
much.  True, the book would open to a bird that looked
like what she was seeing but sometimes it would also
open to other birds that looked like that too.  She
quickly learned how to look at these similar birds and
determine how they differed and what the correct
identification was.  She had even started to learn how
to tell the different groups of birds apart.

Over time, Annie got better and better at identifying
the birds.  She didn’t even need to look up many of
them; she had already memorized what they looked like
and what their names were. As her ability to identify
the birds grew so did her appreciation of their beauty
and of the nature around her.

Then one day Annie found a bird she didn’t recognize. 
Pulling out her Peterson field guide, it didn’t open
to the species, or even to a group of species - all of
the pages turned just like they would in a normal
book.  Still, she was quickly able to turn to the
right page in the book and identify the species.  She
knew that she had finally learned how to identify the
birds.

Smiling, she put the field guide back in her pack and
headed home.  When she got there she discovered that
the book was gone.  Annie went back and searched all
the places it could possibly have fallen out but the
book was nowhere to be found.  Sad at first, she
turned and headed back.  As she walked she grew very
appreciative of all the things Mr. Peterson had taught
her - not only how to identify the birds but also how
to appreciate the natural world around her.  Annie
could always buy another field guide, but she would
miss her ‘personal’ guide to the bird life.

If you’re a beginning birder, frustrated over not
being able to identify the birds you’re seeing, cheer
up and start looking around you.  Maybe you can find
Annie’s lost field guide and have Mr. Peterson
introduce you to the wonders of nature.



=====
Jeff Price
Boulder, CO
jtpbirder@yahoo.com

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