Besides the individualized color-coded sections with categories for Seabirds, Hawk-like birds, chicken-like birds, bird-like birds, flycatchers, and on and on, the book also features some quick guide features that help you in a tight bind when you have spotted a bird, reached for the binoculars with one hand, reached for the book with the other hand, all the while scaring off your prized find. The quick alphabetical index is on the inside cover if you know enough about your bird types to narrow down the search quickly. If you are more of a visual bird boy, there's a Quick Guide displaying wonderful pictures on a white background of 53 of the most common feathered friends.

To even make it more handy, there are "learning pages" among all the individual bird genus species pages. These are truly insightful giving tidbits of info on Flycatchers, Hawks, Shorebirds, Gulls, Warblers, and Sparrows. You will be educated by them learning how to identify immature birds, birds by behavior. It just may include that one tip that helps you put a pos ID on that hard to find match.

Compared to other bird books like the popular "National Audubon Society Field Guide to Birds" this book doesn't leave you flipping between pages to find all the info you are flapping your wings to get a hold of. With this book I have ID'd Scrub Jays, Northern Flickers, Black Phoebe's, Western Kingbirds, and the Yellow-billed Magpie and consequently learned you can find that Magpie nowhere else but Northern California. This bird book flies high, higher than the rest.


THE best guides for the backyard bird watcher   August 24, 2001
 21 out of 22 found this review helpful

A few months after I set up bird feeders in my yard, I found myself looking for a good bird identification book to help me to identify some of the feathered visitors that I had never seen before and couldn't identify. I'm not a professional bird-watcher--just someone who enjoys the variety of birds (and their antics) and who wants to be able to identify and learn something about all these new birds my feeders were atracting. Finding a good bird ID book geared towards the backyard bird-watcher proved to be a lot easier said than done. I looked through all kinds of books, and even the ones by publishers whose reputations would lead one to believe they would likely be what I desired (e.g., National Geographic, Petersen's) were disappointing. Some of the problems with these guides were: dime-sized illustrations of the birds, paintings of birds rather than pictures of them in the wild, (In spite of "professional" bird watcher's who seem to think that bird guides with paintings are the only way to go, I've never seen a painted bird in the wild so I don't find paintings very helpful.), pertinent basic facts like nesting behavior and feeding habits buried in scholarly treatises, or contrarily, very bare descriptions. When I finally found this book (and its companion book covering the western USA), I had finally found what I had looked so long for. Here was a book that had actual pictures of birds in the wild--and they weren't dime-sized either. This book also frequently has a picture of not just the male but also the female birds along with immature young whose coloring is distinct from the adults--and even variant/sub-species show up from time to time. The information in each profile is a good summary of each of the most important aspects of a particular bird species (e.g., distinguishing characteristics, feeding habits, song(s), nesting habits and patterns, and the most interesting/useful notes about miscellaneous aspects of each bird). The guides are excellently organized--and in several ways. There is a quick, color-coded index for finding pages on the most common birds as well as color-marked sections on broad types of birds. A comprensive and easy-to-use index is also included. The only negative aspect to the guides which I've found are that more than once I have found the ranges to be inaccurate--or perhaps out of date. (It's true that the ranges of some bird species seem to spread out rather quickly.) According to the range in the guide, purple finches shouldn't be even near my area; yet, thanks to the guide's comments about distinguishing house finches from purple finches, I've identified them at my feeders many times. Finally, the western region guide covers the region west of the 40th Meridian (line of longitude) which is roughly from the middle of the North Dakota border with Canada down through the "boot" of Texas. (Yes, Canadian birds are covered too.) Any birds that appear at all in that area are covered--even if most of their range is east of that line. The converse is true for the eastern region guide, so in many cases a bird species will be listed in both guides because their range covers areas on both sides of the 40th Meridian.


THE best guide for the backyard bird watcher   August 24, 2001
 2 out of 4 found this review helpful

A few months after I set up bird feeders in my yard, I found myself looking for a good bird identification book to help me to identify some of the feathered visitors that I had never seen before and couldn't identify. I'm not a professional bird-watcher--just someone who enjoys the variety of birds (and their antics) and who wants to be able to identify and learn something about all these new birds my feeders were atracting. Finding a good bird ID book geared towards the backyard bird-watcher proved to be a lot easier said than done. I looked through all kinds of books, and even the ones by publishers whose reputations would lead one to believe they would likely be what I desired (e.g., National Geographic, Petersen's) were disappointing. Some of the problems with these guides were: dime-sized illustrations of the birds, paintings of birds rather than pictures of them in the wild, (In spite of "professional" bird watcher's who seem to think that bird guides with paintings are the only way to go, I've never seen a painted bird in the wild so I don't find paintings very helpful.), pertinent basic facts like nesting behavior and feeding habits buried in scholarly treatises, or contrarily, very bare descriptions. When I finally found this book (and its companion book covering the western USA), I had finally found what I had looked so long for. Here was a book that had actual pictures of birds in the wild--and they weren't dime-sized either. This book also frequently has a picture of not just the male but also the female birds along with immature young whose coloring is distinct from the adults--and even variant/sub-species show up from time to time. The information in each profile is a good summary of each of the most important aspects of a particular bird species (e.g., distinguishing characteristics, feeding habits, song(s), nesting habits and patterns, and the most interesting/useful notes about miscellaneous aspects of each bird). The guides are excellently organized--and in several ways. There is a quick, color-coded index for finding pages on the most common birds as well as color-marked sections on broad types of birds. A comprensive and easy-to-use index is also included. The only negative aspect to the guides which I've found are that more than once I have found the ranges to be inaccurate--or perhaps out of date. (It's true that the ranges of some bird species seem to spread out rather quickly.) According to the range in the guide, purple finches shouldn't be even near my area; yet, thanks to the guide's comments about distinguishing house finches from purple finches, I've identified them at my feeders many times. Finally, the eastern region guide covers the region east of the 40th Meridian (line of longitude) which is roughly from the middle of the North Dakota border with Canada down through the "boot" of Texas. (Yes, Canadian birds are covered too.) Any birds that appear at all in that area are covered--even if most of their range is west of that line. The converse is true for the western region guide, so in many cases a bird species will be listed in both guides because their range covers areas on both sides of the 40th Meridian.