Comments on: Did field guides help you develop a passion for natural history?

By: Kids like bugs: entomology outreach in elementary schools (Part 2) | ESC-SEC Blog

Mon, 13 May 2013 12:03:09 +0000

[…] the look and feel of real field guides and will thumb through them with delight. Part of our own passion about natural history can be traced back to field guides in our houses when we were […]

By: www.quibblo.com

www.quibblo.com — Sat, 04 May 2013 20:29:14 +0000

I don’t comment, but after reading a bunch of remarks on this page Did field guides help you develop a passion for natural history? | Arthropod Ecology. I actually do have a few questions for you if it’s
allright. Is it only me or do some of these remarks come across like they are coming from brain
dead visitors? And, if you are posting on other places, I would
like to follow you. Would you make a list of the complete urls
of all your social networking sites like your linkedin profile, Facebook page or twitter feed?

By: Kids Like Bugs: entomology outreach in elementary schools (Part 2) | Arthropod Ecology

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:21:52 +0000

[...] the look and feel of real field guides and will thumb through them with delight. Part of our own passion about natural history can be traced back to field guides in our houses when we were [...]

By: The Value of Field Courses | Arthropod Ecology

The Value of Field Courses | Arthropod Ecology — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 14:56:50 +0000

[...] of experiential learning will stick. Life-long learning again! As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, I attribute my love of natural history to my exposure to nature as a child, through field guides [...]

By: Chris Buddle

Chris Buddle — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 15:09:22 +0000

Thank you for the thoughtful and detailed comments! These thoughts will certainly resonate with a lot of people who have already commented, and resonate with a lot of field biologists! I have just returned to civilization after a week in the field, we all picked up ‘field guides’ for local flora and fauna at one of the government interpretive centres, and we read these all week in much details – and thanks to these types of information guides about local flora/fauna, we learned a great deal and were enriched by the publications. Although a different type of field guide – the purpose was the same and the end result was the same.

By: Robert Wrigley

Robert Wrigley — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 05:48:32 +0000

I enjoyed reading the comments about the value of field guides, since I too have never been able to resist acquiring natural-history books — the old ones from the late 1800s, with beautiful line drawings, to the new ones with thousands of color photos; each is such a treasure and a wonderful tribute to its author(s). Growing up in St. Lambert, Quebec in the late1940s and ’50s, (before television nature shows), I did not have access to many printed guides to help identify the creatures abounding in the surrounding forests, swamps, and along the St.Lawrence River (prior to the Seaway being built!). When I did receive a guide as a present, it opened up a whole new exciting world, helped explain what I had been observing, and encouraged me to learn more about the natural world. Nature books no doubt contributed to my becoming an ecologist, with Bachelors and Masters of Science degrees (1965 and 1967) at McGill University and a PhD (1970) at the University of Illinois, focussing on small mammals. In fact, I had the amazing opportunity to write the guide book I was looking for as a youngster, entitled “Mammals in North America — From Arctic Ocean to Tropical Rain Forest” (Hyperion Press, 1986; 357 pp).

The last two decades my passion has been collecting and studying beetles (Manitoba and worldwide), and I am somewhat embarrassed to admit publicly that I have close to 10,000 species in my home collection (with annual donations to the Wallis-Roughley Museum of Entomology at the University of Manitoba, and the Manitoba Museum). With such a large collection must go an ever-increasing series of guides and keys, and I spend significant time searching web sites in an attempt to identify and learn about the hundreds of species I find on field trips and through exchanges and purchases. The Entomological Society of Manitoba kindly publishes my field accounts on its web site. Likely only biologists can appreciate the excitement of determining the name of an unknown specimen by locating it in a field guide or working through a key.

Fortunately for field-guide lovers, new nature guides are being published at an astonishing rate. Just this month I received in the mail Paulson’s “Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East,” Beadle and Leckie’s “Peterson Field Guide to Moths of Northeastern North America,” and Eiseman and Charney’s “Tracks and Sign of Insects and other Invertebrates.” Now where am I going to find sufficient shelf space to accommodate all my guides and specimens?

By: Get your mothing on with National Moth Week! « The Bug Geek

Get your mothing on with National Moth Week! « The Bug Geek — Tue, 29 May 2012 22:53:03 +0000

[...] a copy of Seabrooke Leckie’s new Peterson Moths of Northeastern North America field guide (one can never have too many field guides – by the way, you can WIN a field guide if you register!). Then, when I return from my [...]

By: Barbara Frei

Barbara Frei — Thu, 03 May 2012 17:30:03 +0000

A bookshelf of field guides certainly gives me that warm and fuzzy feeling… and a virtual visit to Amazon gives my credit card a red hot burning feeling! I have two beloved traditions involving field guides:
(1) On visiting a new country I splurge on a bird guide (sorry, I’m biased!) and carefully mark the date and place I first saw a new species. Reading my entries years later makes me feel excited about that new sighting all over again!
(2) During past field seasons I have invited my assistants to bring their collection of guides to the field house for the summer. They usually end up in a pile on the kitchen table, allowing us to leaf through them at the end of the a long day or in the wee hours of the morning before we head out. Inevitably, whether bleary eyed in the morning or tuckered out at night one of us finds something that excites or interests us which we share with the others. By the end of the season the table is usually filled with random objects we brought home to identify, including but not limited to skulls, mushrooms, leaves, bark, feathers, and more!

By: TGIQ

TGIQ — Wed, 02 May 2012 01:19:37 +0000

I love flipping through my field guides. These days I also “flip” through Bug Guide (especially the “ID requested” section) – I learn about a lot of interesting critters I’d probably never see otherwise!

By: Chris Buddle

Chris Buddle — Tue, 01 May 2012 23:24:14 +0000

Thanks for the comments – Indeed, Terry, – the look of tropical birds on a cold Montreal evening helps..

Wanderin’ Weeta: I too enjoy the ‘abiotic’ field guides, e.g. rocks and minerals. Your comment takes me back to hikes on Vancouver island many years ago – However, I have not been back there in quite some time. And your description of falling asleep while looking at a field guide is lovely.