Gift-giving for birdwatchers has changed so much over the last few years.

It wasn’t long ago that a good field guide was the ideal gift for the birder on your list. The only question was which field guide to get. Sibley, Peterson, Audubon? The field guide debate was always fun to watch from the sidelines as birders extolled the virtues of their favorite. Can it fit in your back pocket? Are they photos or drawings? Does it show the various plumages?

Now, physical field guides have all but been replaced by digital ones on the phone. It happened in the blink of an eye. One year, birders are flipping through the pages of a book trying to confirm a species; the next, they are scrolling through their phones.

As an old newspaperman, I am very slow to adapt and accept many new technologies, especially ones that threaten to replace traditional media. But, I have to admit, the new field guides on the phone are far superior. That’s up for debate, of course, but that’s my take these days.

I do still enjoy flipping through a field guide in book form when I’m reading for pleasure or killing time. When I’m lying in bed before sleep, I will take flipping through pages to scrolling on a screen any day. (Or should that be night?) 

But in the field, the phone field guides are the go-to choice. You can find the bird in question faster as you don’t have to look at the index and then thumb through to find the pages. With a phone, just open the app, type in a few letters in the search bar and click on your bird.

With a phone, you get multiple photos of the bird in all the various plumages: male, female, immature, seasonal. The description is right below the photos. Most field guide apps also have the various songs and calls of the bird in question. Click a button and hear what a white-eyed vireo sounds like. 

That makes identification in the field so much easier to be able to see photos of the bird and hear actual audio of the bird. Due to the obvious limitations of a book field guide, you get only a description of the song or call or a rough translation of what it sounds like in English. Some field guides even put in histograms, which I could never interpret anyway.

Phone field guides also allow users to keep a record of the birds they see and save the lists for future reference. Of course, that existed long before field guide apps, as people simply wrote down the birds they saw in a notebook and referred to the notebook when necessary or just for fun. To me, that’s still the better way to do it. There’s something more gratifying about writing down your list of birds, rather than typing into a phone or computer.

All this is not to say field guides are no longer good Christmas gifts. They are. They just aren’t as good as phone apps while in the field. Everything else that makes field guides great still holds true. And there’s a strong argument that can be made that field guide books are indeed better in the field because the photos or drawings can highlight distinctive field marks.

There are many other gifts to consider getting for your birdwatcher. Binoculars, spotting scopes, bird feeders (or houses or baths), apparel, decoys, art, bird books, and just about anything you can imagine that features birds as the motif. This can include ornaments, card decks, bedding, shower curtains, pajamas, hats, magnets, coffee mugs, and the list goes on. Like I said, just about anything you can imagine.

Feel free to contact me via the email below if you have any questions about your last-minute birding gifts. Have a great holiday season, everyone. I hope it’s your best one yet.