How did I get so many field guides?

Photo by BarrytheBirder

31 Field Guides & 1 World Checklist

Pictured above is the last bird field guide I purchased. It is the Stokes Field Guide to the Birds of North America which I purchased five years ago.   I now have 31 field guides plus one copy of the World Checklist by Monroe and Sibley (1993), where I have checked off 425 species.   The checklists are by people that range from Roger Tory Peterson to Don & Lillian Stokes and from organizations like the National Audubon Society to National Geographic.   Others are field guides for particular countries such as Australia to Mexico to Venezuela.   Then there are individual species field guides from hummingbirds to hawks.   Interestingly, I have collected the 31 field guides over 31 years, from 1987 to 2018.   There was a time I thought I would go birding all over the world, but now that I am 77 years old I realize that Canada, the US. and the Caribbean will have to do ... no regrets however.   I'm still captivated by birds, even if most of them are in the backyard.   The last few years I thought maybe I should have an online checklist of all the birds I've seen, but now I can't think of a really good reason for doing so.   I can only imagine the looks on the faces of my grandchildren when I hand over a dozen, old, field guides to each of them.   As I was about to sign- off here, I remembered an old field guide that was gifted to me many years ago by a co-worker named Allister Macrae.   He bought it at an auction sale.  It dates back 92 years, to 1926 (see photo below).

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BarrytheBirder