This week, David Allen Sibley released a long-awaited update to his 2000 best seller, "The Sibley Guide to Birds," a popular field guide that helped turn him into a birding legend.

That star status counted for exactly nothing last Sunday as Mr. Sibley stood in the snow near the Concord River in eastern Massachusetts making pish-pish-pish sounds to lure birds from the frozen underbrush. Eventually, a chickadee popped out, took one look at him and hopped away. As he trudged back to his car, he regretted not trying to stir up more action by imitating the shriek of a wounded mouse.

It is this unpretentious approach that has won Mr. Sibley a devoted following, helping him sell more than 1.75 million copies of his various field guides. He's studious, even on days when he can scare up little more than a small songbird. He doesn't try to spot 700 birds a year or master every birdcall. Instead, he aims to observe a single bird for about 15 minutes—a slow pace that would frustrate enthusiasts out to spot 100 species in a day. "If there was an Olympics of birding, I wouldn't necessarily come out on top," he said.

The long-awaited second edition is a complete revamp of the original, a book so ubiquitous that birders have turned his last name into a noun, as in: "What's that bird?" "I don't know, check your Sibley." The updated version includes pictures that are at least 15% larger, with more than 600 new images, 111 rare species added and revisions to about half of the book's 7,000 bird paintings.

"It's been the nonstop talk of the birding world," said Corey Finger, a blogger for the site 10,000 Birds who gave the new edition a largely positive review. Mr. Finger said any field guide proves its mettle in the gulls section, where illustrators must find inventive ways to distinguish between birds that basically all look alike. Mr. Sibley passed the test, he said.