Hawks from Every Angle: How to Identify Raptors in Flight

I'm a bird guy. I absolutely love birds, and the birds I love more than any others are hawks. When I die, I want to come back as a hawk. The problem (if it is a problem) is that I'm no naturalist. I seem constitutionally incapable of identifying most birds. Get me past the typical visitors to my backyard feeders--the junkos, sparrows, wrens, cardinals, goldfinches, thrushes, humming birds, and occasional woodpecker--and I'm pretty lost. But because I so love hawks, and because they've recently reappeared in great numbers in my neck of the woods (central PA), I thought I'd give Liguori's book a try. I'm glad I did. The photographs are stunning--beautiful enough to please the eye, but at the same time crisp and detailed enough to serve as a guide for hawk-spotting. I found especially helpful Liguori's shots of hawks at different flight positions--soaring, gliding, stooping, hovering, and so on. Equally helpful are the charts he provides that compare body, wing and head shapes of different kinds of hawks, falcons, and eagles. Ditto on the migration charts. There's only one thing Liguori's guidebook doesn't have that I wish it did: photographs of perched hawks. I see lots of hawks when I'm driving that are perched on tree branches and electric lines, and I still have difficulty identifying them: redtail? Swainson's? Cooper's? Hopefully, the next edition of Hawks from Every Angle will include the perch angle as well. (In all fairness to Liguori, however, his book is subtitled "How to Identify Raptors in Flight.") It would also be convenient were the book a bit smaller in size. It's broadness makes it a little burdensome in the field. But it could well be that a smaller format would've meant less precise photographs. If that's the case, the tradeoff is a good one.

The illustations make it much easier to identify hawks in the sky and on the ground. It will be a valuable companion on my bird walks in the Audubon and to ID the hawks soaring overhead and through the woods by my home. Libbie

I though this was an excellent resource for identifying hawks in flight. The photos are very informative, and attractive as well. The guide is, in my opinion, very comprehensive and extremely well written.

A super-useful reference guide that goes well with HAWKS IN FLIGHT -- and actually I would probably look at this one first. Photographs and text both contain a lot of helpful information to assist in raptor identification -- though the "pitfalls" shots make it clear that not every bird will be identifiable. Mileage obviously varies, but as a Californian I don't feel shortchanged by this book and have used it particularly for Sharpie/Cooper's differentiation.

As the title indicates, this book focuses primarily on flight identification, and does a good job of showing and comparing raptors from multiple angles. So if you're looking to identify which hawk is perched in a tree in your yard, look elsewhere. But if you're interested in hawkwatching or honing your ability to identify distant raptors, this is a worthy pickup. This book nicely fills a gap between the Wheeler Guides (which have very close detailed photogaphs) and Hawks in Flight (which has mostly illustrations focusing on shape). This book has photographs, but the emphasis is on shape and structure more than plumage. It's got some really helpful pages where they put similar birds together and the same size flying overhead, then all flying to the right, then all flying at you, then flying away so you can directly compare subtle differences. It's got some nice photoshopped stuff where they inserted another bird into a photo for comparison (e.g. a nice one of a Peregrine and a Gyr both flying together). There are also "pitfall" images where they show similar birds you could confuse given certain looks at them. I haven't read all the text yet, but the stuff I've read seems spot-on. It's got some fun hawkwatch numbers, like record days and seasons and a map of hawkwatch sites. (Although some of the dots on the map seem to be off). Overall if you're interested in hawks enough to still be reading this review, you'll probably find this book to be cool.