The Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds is undoubtedly the most innovative avian reference guide to come along in many years. In fact, the guide represents such a bold leap forward that reading it makes one wonder what the future of bird guides holds. This is why we asked readers to share their views on the NEXT big step in bird guide design, philosophy, or technology as part of our Fun, Fun, Fun Crossley ID Guide Giveaway. This is the second entry in a three-part series discussing those predictions:
Richard Crossley subscribes to a tradition of field identification that values GISS (General Impression of Size and Shape) over physical field marks. Understanding each species’ typical behavior, profile, and peculiarities leads to quicker, more accurate IDs, or at least that’s what these oracles into the future of field guides believe:
I can see more guides utilizing the “giss” concept. It would also be interesting if future guide use eBird for their range maps.
The future of guides includes giss as Crossley has demonstrated. Also showing flight patterns would be helpful.
It would be nice to have more guides focus on giss like the Crossley guide. Some things that would be helpful include flight pattern (ex. undulating), flocking behavior, walking vs. hopping, tail wagging, etc.
I can see future guides duplicating Crossley’s style. He certainly has found a niche in ID guides.
Crossley has done an amazing thing. It’s about time a guide focused on giss. I see more guides being developed focusing on this. I’d also like to see flight styles, something like the Golden Guide Birds of North America.
I think future field guides will use giss such as Crossley. They will hopefully streamline there guide so it can be brought in the field.
I think the future of field guides lies with what Crossley has done. Guides focused on GISS and behavior would truly be valuable.
I think Crossley hits the nail on the head. More guides that focus on giss are bound to come down the pipe in the next decade. It would be nice to see such a field guide that can actually be carried in the field!
Another way this emphasis on guides to GISS manifests is a more specific desire for rich multimedia field guides to work the angles…
I think the future of field guides should have lots of views of all the birds, all the plumages, and a sound hookup so that you can listen to the sounds of the bird while looking at its page.
I think future guides will be digital and allow 3-d images which you can rotate 360 degrees to see the field marks from all angles.
The future of field guides in digital videos that show birds from different angles plus in flight. Also footage of them singing.
I think that the next “futuristic” field guide will have more view of the birds that are prone to take a certain position. For example, for warblers, the field guide will show the normal field guide side view, but it will also show the bottom view since the bird is often seen in that position. Or for ducks, the field guide could have a back view. I think that this would be useful because birds are definitely not always in the position a field guide like Peterson shows it. This field guide would be able to help you when you see the bird in an odd position.
And apparently, even existing authorities on field identification need to fall in with the new GISS world order…
I’m a big fan of Sibley but I think he needs to make a new edition with updated maps. Also to be considered for any future guides is flight styles. One guide had a line representing undulating, direct, bounding flights for example. I don’t remember which guide it was, but it was helpful.
Many thanks to everyone who submitted their predictions about the future of birding field guides. How do you imagine an emphasis on general impressions of size and shape will impact the future of bird field and reference guides?
Encouraging… I’ve argued for the intrinsic value of ‘giss’ for a long time, especially since it seems clear all experienced birders employ giss heavily, even if sometimes unconsciously, and even if they can’t always verbalize what it was about a bird’s giss that produced a specific ID. It may even play a central role in recognizing certain large woodpeckers… 😉
I have no idea what this GISS is or means. It does occur to me that guidebooks might benefit from discussing a bird’s jizz, however.
Witty and incisive as usual, Duncan. Yes, this concept we’re talking about has multiple accepted spellings. I prefer giss because as an acronym it seems most directly connected to the term of origin and also because it’s more family-friendly!
According to Wikipedia the term GISS originated in WW2 about planes, whereas the the term jizz relating to birds goes back to the twenties.
As for family friendly, I can only ascribe this to your general American sensibilities, similar to those that lumbered the unfortunate parids of the Americas with the name “chickadee” instead of the far superior name Europeans use. Perhaps the ABA will switch Sula leucogaster to the more acceptable Brown Gannet?
Can you really believe everything you read on Wikipedia?
Kidding, Duncan! I wasn’t aware that jizz is an older term. Do you know the derivation?
And while we may agree that calling all Sula species gannets may be only slightly less objectionable than calling all loons divers (we agree on that, right?), your preference for tit over chickadee makes little sense to me. In Old English, tit referred to any small animal or object. Chickadees are tiny, true, but they’re so much more.
Loon is superior to Diver, no question. But you can prize the Great Tit out of my cold dead fingers. Besides, did you know that Parus Minor was split out of Parus major recently? I guess Japanese Tits simply aren’t that Great Tits anymore.
Wow I sure messed that up. Replace prize with prise and drop the that, and you’ll get the gist of my mangled witty reply!
@Duncan: I was very sad to see the split-off of the Japanese tit because it was not an armchair tick, but the world lost one of its most astounding scientific names: Parus major minor.
And from what I’ve heard, Great Tits are not very common in Japan.
I think the only problem with GISS, Jizz, Jiss… birding by impression is that it is born of experience, and at some point you have to address the needs of beginning birders to learn specifics first. Everyone eventually uses it to some degree, even non birders. Practically no one would glance up at a flock of Rock Doves flying over and not recognize that that is what they are, because their brains have learned that their general shape, size, flight etc is theirs.
On the subject of future methods of identification, I have long wondered whether a combination in binoculars of GPS and Pattern Recognition could provide an in-screen suggestion ie ‘in this location, a bird of that shape and movement is likely to be X or Y’.
As Clare has pointed out very well, [X]izz is a rather 2dangerous” approach as it requires field experience, and this intuition is very difficult to convey in a field guide. I’d prefer a focus on definite field characters (patterning, structure, primary projection etc.) and additional information about the things we combine under the umbrella of [X]izz. What would e.g. a records committee say about a report that someone saw no real field characters but that the bird definitely had the [X]izz of [insert extreme rarity].
Exactly.
And even though this is a very (unrealistically) strict approach, shouldn’t we ID all the birds we see with the same scrutiny we’d apply to a rarity?
So, yes, hurrah to [X]izz as a supportive feature, but No-no to it as a definite field character.
Does anyone have a citation for GISS having ever been used as a real military term? Usually when people claim that words originate as acronyms, it turns out to be a false etymology — i.e. someone has invented the explanation and it stuck because it’s appealing. See Snopes for examples.
It suddenly occurred to me that, in our brave new internet age, the source of the early citation for jizz might be available online, and sure enough, you can read it in its original context from 1922, ‘Bird haunts and nature memories by T.A. Coward’ where it is very clearly the exact modern usage. This link should take you to the exact page:
http://www.archive.org/stream/birdhauntsnature00cowarich#page/140/mode/2up
On the subject of the etymology, T.A. Coward says ‘Since the publication of the first edition, a friend pointed out that in Webster’s Dictionary both “gis” and “jis” are given as obsolete varients of guise, and this seems to be the origin of the expressive word.’
But he could be wrong too.