Here is a list of books I find useful for identifying and understanding birds. You can buy or order these books at Spellbinder in Bishop, the Mono Lake Committee store in Lee Vining, or the Eastern Sierra Interpretive Center in Lone Pine. I encourage you to shop locally, so that these wonderful stores remain available to us.
Hansen K, Beedy EC, Donkin A. Hansen’s Field Guide to the Birds of the Sierra Nevada. Berkeley, CA: Heydey; 2021. Text is succinct and amusing. Great illustrations. This book has taught me more about our local birds than any other. It is the one I grab first to figure out what I photographed.
Beedy EC, Pandolfino ER. Birds of the Sierra Nevada: Their Natural History, Status, and Distribution.Berkeley, CA: University of California Press; 2013. Illustrations by Hansen. Lots of information about birds in our area.
Sibley DA. The Sibley Guide to Birds. 2nd ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf; 2014. This covers every bird in North America. Information about so many species can be confusing compared with Hansen’s book. Sibley says less about our local birds compared with Beedy’s book. But this encyclopedic guide often helps me.
Crossley R. The Crossley ID Guide: Western Birds. Crossley Books; 2021. This book uses photographs instead of illustrations to show birds. 650 scenes are used to show over 10,000 bird pictures. I find these photographs more useful than the drawings in many guide books.
Crossley R, Baicich P, Barry J. The Crossley ID Guide: Waterfowl. West Cape May, New Jersey: Crossley Books; 2017. Tons of photos of ducks, geese, and swans, showing them in the water, on the ground, and in the air.
Crossley R, Liguori R, Sullivan B. The Crossley ID Guide: Raptors. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press; 2013. A gorgeous book that not only helps you identify raptors, but helps with figuring out their age.
Heindel TS, Heindel JA. Birds of Inyo County, California, Including Death Valley National Park. Camarillo, CA: Western Field Ornithologists; 2023. Jo Ann and Tom Heindel live in Big Pine. Their book summarizes data about when and where each species has been seen in Inyo County. This book will not help you with identification. It has few photos. But it provides nearly 500 pages of data about what birders have been reported in Inyo County.
Reid M. Mastering Bird Photography: The Art, Craft, and Techniques of Photographing Birds and Their Behavior. San Rafael, CA: Rocky Nook; 2019. Terrific photos. Detailed advice. Suitable for intermediate or advanced photographers. But her recommendations for cameras are already out-of-date because mirrorless cameras are replacing the digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) cameras of the 2010s. On the web I have noticed that she has moved on to mirrorless digital cameras by Sony.
Vyn G. Photography Birds: Field Techniques and the Art of the Image. Seattle, WA: Mountaineers Books; 2020. Another good, informative book about bird photography. Lots of detail about specific equipment and methods. Some of his equipment choices are already dated: DSLR cameras by Canon and Nikon.
Brusatte S. Dinosaurs Take Flight. In: The Rise And Fall Of The Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World.New York: William Morrow/Harper Collins; 2018:267-305. When I was in high school, dinosaurs were thought to be reptiles. That view has been replaced. Birds evolved from small meat-eating dinosaurs called theropods. This is one of the coolest changes in scientific thought in my lifetime, right up there with plate tectonics and gravitational waves. Brusatte provides a thrilling account of how we learned that birds are dinosaurs, a story that began in 1969.
Peter Cummings
January 22, 2024
Birds of Bishop 