For the Birds: An interview with David Allen Sibley (Video)

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Give me something, anything. Those were my thoughts as David Sibley and I rode the elevator down from The Hour offices to the ground level last weekend.

I had just finished interviewing him and wanted to show him the great birdlife along the Norwalk River from our office. I had told him about the Peregrine Falcons and Osprey that I see frequently here. I boasted about the great waterfowl that had been showing up over the last few weeks -- the Eared Grebes, Red-throated Loons and all three mergansers.

Binoculars in hand we headed to the boardwalk near the river. A single sleeping Mallard, a few Herring Gulls flying back and forth, the occasional pigeon flyby and a distant Double-crested Cormorant. That's it. I was standing with arguably the country's most well-known birdwatcher and all I could show him were a few ordinary species. Oh well, I'm sure he understands that some birding days are just like that.

I could have tried a few other spots around town, but time was tight. He had a speaking engagement at Greenwich Audubon later that evening and I would have been in big trouble if I got him there late. On the drive to Greenwich we saw a few Red-tailed Hawks and Common Mergansers. Not unusual species by any stretch, but more interesting than pigeons and gulls.

Sibley's publisher had set up the interview. I was hoping for a quick phone interview, but they said he was going to be in Connecticut in a few weeks. Could I hold on and spend a few hours in person with him?

Ah, yeah, no problem. The second edition of Sibley's groundbreaking field guide hit the shelves on March 11 and his schedule is jammed pack with speaking engagements and book signings throughout the country. Like I'm going to turn down that offer.

The highlight of the day, for me, was the interview itself. We talked first about his groundbreaking field guide, The Sibley Guide to Birds, which was published in 2000. It was revolutionary and represented what he thought a field guide should look like. The thousands of drawings in the guide are all his. It was the culmination of 12 years of work for the artist and ornithologist.

Hour photo / Erik Trautmann Renown birder and author David Allen Sibley visits Norwalk to birdwatch with The Hour's Chris Bosak Saturday. Hour photo / Erik Trautmann Renown birder and author David Allen Sibley visits Norwalk to birdwatch with The Hour's Chris Bosak Saturday. Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close For the Birds: An interview with David Allen Sibley (Video) 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

We switched gears and talked about the second edition of the Sibley Guide to Birds. The birding world was abuzz with anticipation as the March 11 release date closed in. Since it's release, the buzz hasn't let up. The second edition includes several updates and additions. It includes more than 600 new illustrations and more than 100 additional rare birds are included. The maps have also been revised to update the movement of bird populations over the last 14 years.

"I had a lot of information I wanted to add and some little things I wanted to correct," he said. "A few species names have changed and I wanted to fix that. It's just an overall update of the book. I rewrote almost all the text. It's essentially a completely new book."

In addition to the new illustrations, Sibley said he updated about 50 percent of the art of the original book.

Personally, I love the Sibley guides and the way the birds are presented. Sibley's drawings highlight the birds' plumage subtleties against a white background to eliminate any distractions. The birds are shown in all plumages, such as male, female, winter, breeding, immature and adult. Maps and descriptions are on the same page.

From there the questions during the interview covered a wide range of birding topics: from Snowy Owls to bird conservation; from western hummingbirds to moving east to his younger days in Cape May, N.J.; and from his father's influence on his childhood to the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Other video snippets will also be available at www.birdsofnewengland.com shortly.

I enjoy doing interviews that go off in several different directions. It's interesting to hear what well-known ornithologists think about certain birding topics.

I'll conclude this column with Sibley's thoughs on birdwatching in New England. He was born in Connecticut and now lives in Massachusetts.

"Having grown up here, I really got fascinated by bird migration and the change of seasons, which is something New Englanders have to appreciate. You have to enjoy the change of seasons to live here and birds make it easier to appreciate the change of seasons because there's always something to look forward to," he said. "Each month of the year is different. There's such a dramatic change between, say, March and May. This flood of migration that happens around the end of April and beginning of May when all of the sudden you go out one day and there's 20 species in your neighborhood that weren't there the day before. The warblers and vireos and flycatchers and others migrants from the Tropics that have just come back for the summer. It's just so exciting -- when spring finally breaks open and the birds are back."

The birds certainly weren't around the Norwalk River on this particular day, but that minor disappointment pales in comparison to the fascinating birding conversation that was had moments before.

For the Birds runs Thursdays in The Hour. Chris Bosak can be reached at bozclark@earthlink.net. Visit his website at

birdsofnewengland.com.