All the Birds of North America : American Bird Conservancy's Field Guide

I was very disappointed that there is a strong mildew odor. I cannot carry it with me! For the price I wouldn't give it a good rating!

This book is a very useable field guide for beginning birders. The book is organized to help you identify birds as quickly as possible. First, you decide whether you are looking at a water bird or a land bird; the first part of the book covers water birds, and the second part land birds. If you're looking at a land bird, you next decide whether you've got a large bird or a small one. The section on large birds has small silhouettes of the birds' shapes in the margin, while the section on small birds shows the birds' beaks. By flipping through these small drawings in the margins, you can easily narrow down the bird you are looking at to a few pages. Then you look at the numerous color illustrations, the range maps, the short descriptions, and the song patterns to help you determine the identity of your bird. For further information, each chapter starts with a short article that describes the morphology and behavior of the group of birds that are covered in the chapter. Scientific names are included for each bird, and rare or endangered birds are highlighted. As a rank beginner bird watcher, I found the book extremely easy to use and informative. The color illustrations, because they are idealizations, were much more accurate and easier to use than the color photographs that appear in some other field guides. The descriptions of each bird are rather short, leaving me hungry for more details, but this book is a great place to start.

This is the best bird guide I have ever used. It helps my family to identify birds by key features. My sons now look at birds and tell me their beak shape, what they most likely eat, the color of the legs and their relative size, all from regularly using this book. It gives pictorial examples of birds one might confuse with one another. Also useful are the estimates of particular bird population in each geographic area, with terms such as "abundant," "populous," "numerous," and "numerous but declining." I appreciate the brief, not preachy, explanations given for why certain populations of birds are declining.

The standard guide for birds by Roger Tory Peterson is being challenged by this comprehensive collection from the American Bird Conservancy. The differences are evident as soon as you turn to the first page. There is a chart "How to Identify Birds," turned sideways, with a list of bird outlines divided into type (where they're seens, the shape of their bills), each accompanied by a number of possible bird types. Each line yields a page number. Continue holding the book sideways, you flip to the proper page number (which are printed sideways as well, indicating the thought put into organizing the information), where -- turn the book proper, please! -- you find a selection of bird illustrations to match with your sighting. Subtle signals dot the pages to guide you on your quest. Musical notes indicate if the bird sings, and gives a general idea of how; names are color-coded according to how scarce they are. But it is in organization and presentation of information that this book shines, and you realize with a start that all birding books should look like this. It really is an imaginative breaththrough.

I have been interested in birding for about ten years, and own several other bird guides, and have examined closely several more. As you might imagine, most guides share quite a lot in common. If I were using a field guide to simply look at a backyard bird, I might equally well use my Peterson's Guide or my NGS Field Guide to the Birds of North America. All three of these guides have good art and organization, and are very usable. I think this is the best guide for FIELD use for several reasons: 1) The size and shape easily fit in a normal pocket. 2) The weather resistant materials the book is made of. 3) The way birds are grouped, by similarities in behavior, habitat, and appearance, allows for easy comparison and rapid identification of a species. The authors have obviously put a lot of thought into the design and organization of this book and it has a lot to offer both the beginning and advanced birder.

Being an avid birder, this is by far the best book to take into the field. Its new design makes it extremely quick to find the bird simply by looking at its basic shape and behavior. My favorite part is how it organizes its warblers into Eastern, Western, wingbars, no wing bars, etc. Although it doesn't have as many versions of species as the National Geographic guide, it is much more field worthy being smaller and easier. Being an advanced birder, when I say easier, I do not therefore limit it to the beginner. Every birder must admit he or she has problems with certain birds. This field guide is superb at every kind of bird (particularly difficult ones like gulls, warblers, etc.). The illustrations are the most beautiful and accurate I have ever seen. The section at the beginning with computer generated images of extinct birds is very interesting (and helpful, too if you happen to find a remnant flock of Bachman's warblers). It is much more up to date and has better illustrations than Peterson (not to mention that this has maps on the same page). It beats Audubon by having illustrations instead of photographs, more plumages of species, and the descriptions and maps on the same page as the bird. It surpasses Golden with it's better illustrations and easier to understand format. It does, however, lack some important plumage variations in certain birds (i.e. the ruff). But next to everything else it is the most superb guide I have ever used.