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The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behaviour by David Sibley, Christopher
Helm, £35, ISBN 0713662506

EVEN great artists may have an Achilles’ heel: for wildlife painter David
Sibley, it is birds’ feet. The son of a noted Yale ornithologist, he began
watching and drawing birds in 1969 at the age of seven. More than three decades
later, he still struggles to capture a true likeness of their lower
limbs—or so he says.

Looking at the exquisite illustrations in Bird Life & Behaviour,
it’s clear that the artist is mistaken. Among nearly 800 full-colour pictures
there are many showing the range of foot and claw arrangements developed by
different bird families, and there’s certainly nothing inferior about their
draughtsmanship.

The book is a companion volume to his North American Bird Guide,
published in 2000. That has become the definitive field guide for serious
birders (don’t call them twitchers—it makes them, er, twitchy). The new
book goes beyond identification, with sections on bird morphology, evolution,
ecology and behaviour. Then there are short chapters on the particular
characteristics of each of the 80 different bird families recorded in North
America.

Star members of these families include the swift-running wild turkeys that
are commonly found from Wyoming, Illinois and New York to Mexico and the Gulf
Coast. And then there’s the mocking bird that has been picked as state bird by
Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas.

The text, produced by a team of 44 expert ornithologists is both clear and
authoritative. But it is the quality of Sibley’s pictures that make this such a
worthwhile acquisition for anyone with an interest in bird behaviour, in North
America and beyond.