A field guide to field guides

First of three parts

Secondhand field identification is an esoteric sport, practiced by invitation only. Example: "I saw this bird. It was kinda brown and medium-size and hid in the bushes. What was it?" After a certain level of frustration, one either becomes a bore or starts acquiring and/or giving field guides. Because gardens attract wildlife even on urban rooftops - check out the California Academy of Sciences - gardeners and their friends are likely to find themselves in the game on one side or another.

For some of us there's aesthetic pleasure in being able to attach a name to a plant or bird or insect, particularly a new acquaintance. Names give us access to other knowledge, a way to tug on a thread in the fabric of reality and see stories, places, times, other humans, other animals or sciences. Eventually, absolutely nothing is boring - except maybe golf.

Practical reasons

There are also practical reasons to know names. Gardeners need to be able to distinguish between insect pests and beneficials. That adventitious plant that just showed up might be a takeover artist, or something benign and interesting. People with birdfeeders should know who their customers are and who else might be in the neighborhood, so they can offer appropriate chow.

There's nothing mysterious about the identification process; it's a matter of observing, comparing and judging the likelihood of seeing what you thought you saw. For the comparison and likelihood parts, you're going to need a good field guide - a book that translates technical descriptions of plants and animals into a format that nonspecialists can use.

We should point out that (alas) we are not being subsidized by the University of California Press, Houghton Mifflin or Heyday Books; they just happen to have produced some extremely useful books.

For Bay Area wildlife in general, check out John Muir Laws' pocket guides from Heyday. Each of the four fold-out waterproof guides depicts the plants and animals of an important local habitat: grassland, forests, bayshore or creek. Your nearest wild place will probably house garden visitors, and the guides are compact enough to keep in your pack or pocket too.

Roger Tory Peterson invented the modern bird guide back in 1934. Now there are whole shelves to choose from, for different levels of expertise and obsession. Peterson died in 1996, but his bird guides are still going strong, with new eastern and western North America editions this year from Houghton Mifflin. Some swear by National Geographic's Birds of North America, others by David Sibley's Sibley Guide to Birds from Knopf, both also with eastern and western versions. These are illustrated with paintings; others, like the guides by Kenn Kaufman (Birds of North America, Houghton Mifflin) and Donald and Lillian Stokes (The Stokes Field Guide to the Birds of North America, Little, Brown), use photographs.

Birds get around

Because birds (and some birders) are highly mobile, no one has published a field guide for California birds only. Bolinas artist-naturalist Keith Hansen has been working on a guide to Sierra birds that should also be useful in other parts of the state and of course will be gorgeous too.

Hard-core birders may like the more specialized guides that focus on a single group of birds: hawks, shorebirds, gulls, hummingbirds, warblers. You can also buy guides to bird songs, eggs and nests, even tracks, not to mention books on attracting birds to your home. There are of course iPhone and iPad apps for birding, at least five of them at last count, but we're not the people to evaluate them.

Beyond birds: Several good mammal guides have appeared in the last few years. California Mammals by E.W. Jameson Jr. and Hans Peeters (UC Press) has a local focus and, one hopes, will reduce the number of golden retrievers reported as cougars.

We also like Fiona Reid's Field Guide to Mammals of North America in the Peterson series (Houghton Mifflin).

For garden reptiles and amphibians - and they're probably there, noticed or not - the gold standard is another Peterson guide, UC Berkeley emeritus Professor Robert C. Stebbins' Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians. Stebbins' handsome paintings capture the looks and attitudes of the herps so well they're as much a pleasure as a tool.

Next: Getting to know your local insects.

Joe Eaton and Ron Sullivan are naturalists and writers in Berkeley. Check out their website at www.selbornesurveys.com, or e-mail them at home@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page L - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle