The Globe's Mark Wilson is an award-winning nature photographer. His birding column appears regularly. If variety is the spice of life, then it can also be the grit. Particularly when variety is applied to field guides. Particularly when you are purchasing your first bird guide.

Make the wrong choice or, more important, the wrong order of choices, and you will wrestle with the hawks, groan over the gulls, fail on the flycatchers, and get wiped out by the fall warblers. First-time field ...