Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America
- ISBN13: 9780061120404
- Condition: New
- Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Features: A complete guide to birds. Superb color photography. Up-to-date and detailed range maps. Clear and concise text. DVD of birdsongs. This new field guide provides a suite of modern tools to effectively aid in the identification of more than 750 species of birds across North America. It introduces a “whole bird” approach by concisely gathering a collection of information about birds into one portable and well-organized volume. 2,000 stunning color photographs of birds in natural h
Rating: 
(out of 68 reviews)
List Price: $ 24.95
Price: $ 13.52
“Bird Watching”
5 Comments
Review by D. Blankenship for Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America
Rating:
While I certainly do not consider myself an expert birder, I have been active in this wonderful pastime for around fifty years now. I do spend quite a lot of time in the field and my wife and I do travel quite a lot, she perusing her interests and mine. My first field guide was the old Roger Tory Peterson publication; actually it was the 1941 edition, which I still have. My goodness, we have come along way.
This new Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds is an absolute delight to use and a delight to the eye and ear. It is a rather large and heavy book, quite a lot larger than your average guide and weighs probably close to two pounds. This may not seem like much on a short stroll through the park, but it is of major consideration when spending day after day in the field, much of it walking. That cannot be helped though, as the size is indeed needed to record the plethora of information found between its covers. The book is well bound, which is very important. I have had more than one guide over the years that I have completely destroyed simply from over use and dragging in through the bush. I must admit that I have not had this particular book long enough to truly abuse it, but I suspect that it will hold up better than most. A day or two crouching in a swamp should tell that tale.
The book is arranged in order of families and not color or general habitat, which may take some getting use to for the beginning birder. This is really of minor concern though and of little moment. Each species addressed 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 we get 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. As another reviewer pointed out, we are in a very dynamic period of flux at this time and some bird ranges are going through drastic changes. A current range map is quite necessary and this work provides that. 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 sprinkled here and there 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 which may be a problem for some. Personally, even after all these years, I still have problems identifying even 50 birds by their call, but then I have a tin ear for such things. Other reviews have noted, as does the book, that these songs are down loadable to a MP3 Player. To be quite frank, I have not a clued what an MP3 is, so I will take their word for it.
I do highly recommend this work. I must say though that I would strongly suggest you have a couple of other field guides stuck in your pack. No one book will fill all of your needs as to identification. I still lug around a copy of Peterson’s guide (a more current copy than the 1941 edition I mentioned) and still find it quite useful. I personally like bird drawings to supplement bird photographs as I find having the two make identification much easier. This is particularly true with shore birds. The only complaint I have with this particular book, and it is a very minor complaint and is more my problem than that of the book, is that I wish the shade of ink used could have been darker. The light color with the thin font is rather difficult for me to read in dim light. This is just me though, and perhaps younger eyes will have no problems. All in all though, this is an outstanding guide and I do not see how you could possibly go wrong with it.
D. Blankenship
Review by James L. Spingarn for Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America
Rating:
As a companion to the better artwork illustated field guides such as National Geographic’s, Sibley’s or Peterson’s, this photographic guide is a very worthwhile addition. It is the proper field-size and covers the important identification points, excellent up-to-date maps, interesting sidebars of relevant information, sizes in inches and weight in pounds and ounces (tired metric measurements?), brief summary of voice and an excellent included DVD with 587 downloadable birdsongs.
All photos are excellent and usefully descriptive by sex and age or seasonal plumage and important subspecies. Highly recommended!
Review by Biffybeans for Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America
Rating:
There is no doubt that this book is well worth it’s price for the information it contains, but for an avid birder like myself, it’s hard to not compare it to the old standby, Peterson Field Guide(R) to Eastern Birds: Fourth Edition (Peterson Field Guides). (Eastern or Western North American editions.)
When I first started birding over 15 years ago, I started with a similar field guide that showed photographs of the birds rather than illustrations. While an illustrated field guide may not be as “pretty” it’s much more consistent in being able to show the exact markings you will expect to see in a given species. Try to identify a fall warbler and you’ll see what I mean. (Fall warblers are not as colorful as their spring counterparts which makes them much more difficult to identify.) I graduated to the Peterson’s illustrated guides and have been using them faithfully ever since.
In this Smithsonian edition, the images are beautiful and attempt to show the variety on male/female/juvenille/seasonal plumages. The size, wingspan, weight, typical habitat, song description and a range map are included on every page of every species. Peterson’s guides make you flip to the back of the book for the range maps and this is much easier.
Songs on the DVD go from species to species without an announcement of what species you hearing, unlike the other CD’s of bird songs that I’ve listened to. If you are listening to the songs on an MP3 player, or in a program like Windows Media player, images of the current vocalizing bird display as album art which is a nice touch. Even if you aren’t listening to specifically learn the birds, it’s very pretty to hear the songs run from one to the next, like being in the woods with them.
The book includes a description of each family at the beginning of each section. There is also a species checklist at the back of the book.
One thing I missed in this book are the bird of prey silhouette images from Peterson’s book. The silhouettes are very helpful for bird of prey identification when spotting them against a sunny sky.
I believe this book is too big to use as a practical field guide, both in physical size, and number of species unless you are taking a cross country bird watching expedition.
I’m also not sure that the cover would hold up in the long run, as it’s not as durable as the cover on the Peterson’s guide. The size and weight of this book might cause it to get beat up quicker than it should.
The DVD is secured to the inside of the back cover, and I personally don’t like keeping a disc in a book as it makes the book hard to handle. This might be petty, but when I tried to remove the disc pouch, it was very secure and caused me to tear up the inside back cover.
All in all, I’m still giving it 5 stars for the amount of information you get for the money. It’s a beautiful book worthy of taking a spot on your reference shelf.
Review by Donald Morgan for Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America
Rating:
I’ll admit that I did buy it partially for the DVD and that’s a major disappointment. Though it contains 587 files, they cover only 138 birds, and the selection of the birds is suspect at best. Including species such as American Robin, European Starling and House sparrow is just a waste. Also, many of the individual tracks are nesting sounds, etc. which are useless to me and I believe, the typical birder. If they had included only typical songs and calls they could have probably included 300 or 400 birds with that many tracks. The tracks are the typically excellent recordings of Lang Elliot, who, of course, has a library of probably thousands of birds.
Having said that, I agree with the majority of reviews which say the book is a good to excellent field guide, which could stand on its own and probably deserve a rating between 4 and 5 stars. The pictures are excellent, in many cases better than I have found in other guides for a particular species. There is also a good bit of detailed and useful information included. I would recommend the book to anyone. They should have left out the DVD and knocked a buck or two off the price.
Review by palealien for Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America
Rating:
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R2RL57WU23CTIL We begin the book with excellent introduction consisting of identification, coverage, species accounts, and a concise Natural History of Birds prefacing over 400 pages of excellent spotting photos, descriptive text and colorful range maps.
The photographs are carefully shot to illustrate the characteristics identifying of a bird, but as I work through it I am finding the size to be a bit small- here, the Audubon guide’s formatting seems to make more sense as it allows two large photos a page, instead of four to six rather small images. As a field guide, I suppose there must be concessions to portability- even though at just over two pounds and measuring 6 by 8 inches, it will not slip easily into many pockets.
Even so, I find I prefer to have all the info on one page, rather than having to go from the index to a plate to the description page then maybe back to the plate again. It’s still a little effort to find your bird, but so far the most accessible and painless way I have tried.
Included was an unexpected bonus, a DVD-ROM with nearly 600 high quality MP3 files of birdsongs. The folder wrapping it has a thumbnail of each species and the filename of the call. Each file also has an embedded image of the bird to accompany, but my equipment is too ancient to be able to view. I find this to be an added advantage to me in identifying birds, if I can guess at the species in general, the sounds help me pin it down exactly. And they’re great for driving your cats insane.
A review comparing one product to another is not a very creative way to go about it, but in a case like the SFG there is a perfectly good reason, and that would be the National Audubon Society Field Guide to Birds of North America. The earliest version of this book goes back to 1838, the edition I have was first published in 1977 (mine is from 1994)
Butte Creek Canyon is a great place for birds. The video is a little clip of the reviewer practicing his turkey call. Other than obvious birds like that, I have never been very good at identifying them, and I have just lumped them into categories- “those little finchlike things”, “the doves”, “woodpeckers” – only a few have a big enough reputation to be properly specifically identified: turkey vultures, quail, and, yes, turkeys. I picked up the Audubon book some time ago and I never really found it very helpful. I know two centuries of birders will revile my skills, but while I found the layout beautiful to flip through, it was frustrating for getting an answer.
Enter the SFG. At once I saw a major complaint I have with the Audubon book is not present: color plates and the description are on the same page, unlike the Audubon book, in which you must first find the plate of the bird you seek, then refer to the description in the second section. I know this is probably way John J did if back then, and I am equally sure there is a great reason for it, but for the casual bird admirer like myself it was just another step until I could get to understand the feeding habits of the Western Tanager, for example. Missing are the silhouettes of the Audubon book, which work for aircraft spotting but not much of a help to me with birds.
There are many bird books out there, but I would conclude this one is superior- it is thorough and professional in every regard.
Update: I received an iPod for my birthday, and believe it or not one of the first things I did was upload the birdsongs and images from the DVD- mainly because I wanted to see how they did it. . Just browse to the folder on the disk you want to copy into iTunes, and import as another musical selection with the image of the bird as the cover art. Which can make for an interesting shuffle-play experience!
It is way cool, and while I do not plan to carry the Pod when I am out wandering the woods, it is a nice feature and might prove helpful in identification in the future.