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Another step towards the modern field guide happened in 1903, when ornithologist and curator at the American Museum of Natural History Frank Chapman<\/a> worked with illustrator Chester Reed to produce a book whose sole aim was “the identification of the bird in the bush”. Their Color Key to North American Birds (<\/em>available here\u00a0through Project Gutenberg<\/a>)<\/em>\u00a0was the first to rely on a visual approach to identification, rather than the lengthy, technical, and difficult to use taxonomic keys that collection-based ornithologists relied on. Each species was illustrated with a tinted ink drawing, executed not as works of expressive art, but as a symbolic and characteristic representation of what a bird generally looked like from a distance. Chapman also arranged his birds by their most obvious color or habits, rather than by taxonomic family and genus. The text was a condensed description of each bird’s plumage, voice, and range.<\/p>\n This book was a landmark; for the first time an expert had put together one book,\u00a0specifically for bird-watchers, designed to aid identification in the field, primarily through illustrations, covering the birds\u00a0of the entire continent north of Mexico. The shift from specimens to observation-from the dead bird to the living one<\/span>, is demonstrated in its pages.<\/p>\n Another step towards the modern field guide happened in 1903, when ornithologist and curator at the American Museum of Natural History Frank Chapman worked with illustrator Chester Reed to produce a book whose sole aim was “the identification of the bird in the bush”. Their Color Key to North American Birds (available here\u00a0through Project Gutenberg)\u00a0was the first to rely on…<\/p>\nIt was a decent\u00a0success, and he brought out a second edition in 1912.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"