Those who tried the pine siskin link I offered here yesterday have discovered, or perhaps only rediscovered, the wealth of information available via A. C. Bent's 21-volume work on N. American birds. Once out of print, it was reissued in paperback by Dover Publications, where only a few volumes remain in their catalog, but with time you can still accumulate a full set by shopping in used-book stores. Since then dedicated editors (Biddle, Peterson, & Gordon) had the entire work scanned, and Birdzilla hosts it in searchable form. Beware of typical scanning errors in the text, though. Bookmark it at http://www.birdzilla.com/sub.asp?strType=omnibus_intro&strTitle=Birdzilla:+Wild+Bird+Omnibus The commoner species are also at http://www.birdsbybent.com/index.html but not always copied in their entirety. Based on Bent in many ways, the newer "Birds of North America," with far, far fewer copies in print, is available in some large libraries, and is now on line for a hefty subscription fee. Recently endowed with audio files and color photos and updated bibliographies, it includes what has been learned since Bent's day (often surprisingly little) about the life histories of our birds. Its authors are far more likely to be academics. Each species has its own author(s), and the quality is uneven because the acknowledged experts on each are far from regularly among them. The intimate acquaintances of younger authors--and there are many of them--with species can be too narrow in scope because of the limitations of their institutional research topics. The BNA accounts rely on the same 300+ years of N. American experience as does Bent, adding discoveries of the past few decades. BNA authors have seldom sought as much data from experienced field observers as Bent did, and usually only summarize or cite his work for such purposes. The BNA accounts are *not* a substitute, or even in many ways an improvement on, the earlier work. If I had access to only one, I'd choose Bent, even though the BNA is a great reference overall. Actually, it's remarkable that having successfully sold all their printed copies long ago (for far more than the Bent books would cost if published even today), Cornell and the AOU and the Philadelphia Academy are still selling the BNA via yearly subscriptions on-line for $42 a year. This would be more understandable if they'd put the final 2002 texts on line, and charged only for subsequent revisions and new features. If you have institutional academic affiliations--even as an athlete, fund-raiser, or maintenance worker--you can consult it for free, but if you are a bird enthusiast living far from a quite substantial library you have few options. Why doesn't Cornell offer Bent on line, too, if they want to inform birders? Because they couldn't get away with charging for it? Another example of cashing in on the popularity of birding, even if it keeps information from some who can learn from it. Bill Whan Columbus ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. Additional discussions can be found in our forums, at www.ohiobirds.org/forum/. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]