horvath@granite.cr.bull.com (John Horvath) (01/19/90)
I received a new catalog this weekend from a book dealer who specializes in natural history books. In it were two future listings of interest to this newgroup. They were a new edition of Peterson's Western birds and new releases of the associated bird songs on compact disc format (for both eastern and western regions). Both items were scheduled to be released this april 1990. In 1980, when he finished the new release of the eastern volume, Peterson was out hitting the book circuits, giving lectures to promote his new edition. I saw him speaking at the Boston Public library. He mentioned there was a lot of criticism from professional orthinologists that he missed some well published field indentification points. I don't remember which species but relative to the scope of the guide, it seemed minor. He mentioned that he would do things differently next time, with the western release, like get more feedback from specialists. I bet that's one of reasons this revision took 10 years to do. Maybe another one is that are so many more species in the west compared to the east. I am glad to see that they are finally releasing the songs on CD. It seems like a great format for convenience. I keep scratching my record when I cue through it looking for something. To be able to jump right to an individual song seems great. At least, I am hoping that they did it so each species is coded on an individual track. Well, maybe not. Isn't there a limit of 99 tracks per disc?? Then it might require spliting them between 3 discs? Each previous new release has always been new recordings. I wonder if this is ADD or DDD? :')