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| Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America | 
 enlarge | Author: Ted Floyd
Publisher: Collins
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $14.87
You Save: $10.08 (40%)
Buy New/Used from $10.73
Avg. Customer Rating:  (55 reviews)
Sales Rank: 9348
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: Pap/DVD
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 528
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.2
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.4 x 1.4
ISBN: 0061120405
Dewey Decimal Number: 598.097
EAN: 9780061120404
ASIN: 0061120405
Publication Date: June 1, 2008
Release Date: May 27, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Excellent guide September 18, 2008
I'm going to start with the summary first, for those in a hurry: this is a wonderful guide, chock full of full, high-color photographs and a fantastic CD with bird calls on it that can be downloaded to an MP3 player. With the possible exception of the fact I had some issues actually correlating the birds in real life before me with their counterparts in the book, I really like having this book as reference.
Birds are categorized according to their species and further information is provided with each bird such as their locations in the north American area (which, to be specific, comprises of the lower 48 states, Alaska and Canada, but not really Mexico and parts further south) and their winter ranges and otherwise.
Each entry is succinct and easy-to-follow. All variations, if they exist, in plumage are described. The different sexes and juveniles are also described, but all without being overwhelming. The only issue I had with using the guide was using it to find birds in my backyard, the names of which I didn't know. I wish there were a better way of quickly finding a bird in the book, perhaps by grouping them by color? I don't know, I suppose knowing which birds are which is a skill is picked up with practice.
Four stars.
A great field-guide September 15, 2008
I am not a experienced bird watcher. My husband and I moved into our house 5 years ago and we have a bunch of butterfly bushes and tree's and I am always seeing birds around our yard. One even nested in the butterfly bush just outside my kitchen window. This guide has wonderful photographs, loads of birds all categorized by type.
My only issue with this guide is, as I am very inexperienced I really haven't figured out all the different types of birds, so I wish there was a way to have an index of small photographs categorized by color, so I could very quickly find a bird while I was watching it. I think the more I look at the book the more I'll learn to recognize what type of bird I am looking at and be able to look it up more quickly.
 The ultimate handy bird reference August 28, 2008
This is a very impressive and easily navigable guide for bird novices and a nice handy recourse for the bird expert. It comes with a dvd that has 587 birdsong samples in high quality, along with a picture to go along with each sample. The book is set up with a nice introduction establishes how the book is laid out and what information one can expect to find in the text. The text itself is organized by bird families and each entry shows where one would expect to find the birds in question most often. The pictures to go with the descriptions are all very nice and clear, and should enable one to have a good shot at picking out the different species on sight. Lots of information, lots of great pictures and a host of extras (including the birdsongs) here. The book is light in weight for having so much information, and the cover and binding are made especially to be durable and portable. It's a great guide.
This is a great book on North America birds! August 21, 2008
The book is arranged in order of families and not color or general habitat, which takes a bit getting used to. Each species listed in this book is covered by some of the best bird photographs I have seen in any field guide at any time. In most cases there is a photograph of the female, male and juvenile. In addition, when appropriate there is a photo of the bird in molt and out. All of these photographs are of top quality. There is a range map provided with each species which covers breeding, winter, year-round, migration and rare ranges. This is most useful. Information given on each species includes measurements and average weights, molt periods, differences between mature and adult birds, geographic variations, if any and a nice written example of their call, which I find most accurate. Many of the photographs feature the bird in both flight (very helpful) and setting. Both the common name and the scientific name are given. Each bird is given its ABA Code for each area, again, most useful.
There is a nicely written and informative introduction to each family of birds. There are many little side notes of interest interspersed throughout the book addressing particular problems of identification of particular birds. Of course there is the DVD which includes 587 recordings and is completely down loadable. This is a very nice DVD and the quality is great. Now there are only 138 species of birds represented on this DVD.
I do highly recommend this work. This is an outstanding guide and I do not see how you could possibly go wrong with it.
Probably the best Photographic, General Field Guide for North America August 21, 2008
Ok, I do think it is best in class (a narrowly defined class) but not the best general field guide out there. That bar still stands at The Sibley Guide to Birds which has painted illustrations rather than photographs that tend to work better for portraying idealized birds and page layout.
But this guide does stand heads and shoulders above the old Audobon Bird Guide: Eastern Land Birds in photo quality as well as layout. Audobon's original attempt really showed just how hard it is to identify birds from photographs due to changes in lighting and feather contours (see kinglet images.) This was improved upon greatly with Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America Kaufman reattempted a photographic field guide by using a lot of retouching and computer work to make more idealized photographs and was easily the best until this book.
This book succeeds in the most part because the pool of available high quality photographs is much larger than it was when the Audobon series came out. Each species is well represented with striking images. You can never have too many reference books when trying to make a difficult identification and this would augment the Sibley guide very well. However we are still talking about three images to identify a Thayers Gull, where sibley can dedicate 6 or more to a gull species. Also there are family specific guides out there like Gulls: Guide to Identification, The Shorebird Guide, A Photographic Guide to North American Raptors which this book cannot compete with, however it is surprisingly decent for covering these families.
Pros
Great high quality pictures
General design puts all information for a species on one page
Good species coverage
DVD of bird songs is a nice bonus (see caveats below)
Good additional reference for field identification
Size decent (approx the size of Sibley's, but does not fit in pocket)
High Quality construction
Cons
Photos make page design seem a little cluttered
Species information is pretty brief
range maps small somewhat confusing, somewhat optimistic in ranges.
DVD has limited species
Notes on the DVD
Much like this book in general, I would never pass on getting another reference, especially if it is kind of a bonus DVD of bird calls. But I was a little disappointed to find out that the 587 birds songs listed on the front was not 587 species, but only 587 clips of 138 major species. And it is a little strange what species they chose. It appears that they chose the most common species you would find in your backyard. This seems less helpful than choosing confusing sound alike species, or species that are most likely located by calls. It is odd that they don't cover all the epidonax flycatchers which are ID'ed by calls, or the call of the yellow billed cuckoo without the black billed. If you were hoping to learn bird calls from this DVD, think about getting Birding by Ear: Eastern and Central North America (Peterson Field Guides(R)) or Stokes Field Guide to Bird Songs: Eastern Region (Stokes Field Guide to Bird Songs) for a more complete species list.
All in all, if you are getting one field guide get The Sibley Guide to Birds, if you are getting just two, get this for your second, or if you are like me get this for your 23rd. It is a good but not perfect guide.
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