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| Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America | 
| Author: Kenn Kaufman
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Category: Book
List Price: $18.95
Buy Used: $4.79
You Save: $14.16 (75%)
New (27) from $10.54
Avg. Customer Rating:  51 reviews
Sales Rank: 11627
Media: Turtleback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 392
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 4.8 x 1.1
ISBN: 0618574239
Dewey Decimal Number: 598.097
EAN: 9780618574230
ASIN: 0618574239
Publication Date: April 14, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: May be shiny, in some instances dust jackets are not included, no missing pages, no damage to binding, may have a remainder mark.
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| Customer Reviews:
 If I Could Have Only One - This Would Be It April 21, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
There is one big problem with all Kaufman Focus Guides - they don't make a broad enough line of them! If I were able to have only 1 book on a given subject (birds, butterflies, mammals, etc.) I would always choose the Kaufman Focus Guide. I particularly like the excellent photos as compared with the illustrations most other books seem to offer.
I'm very much an amateur and shoot a lot of nature shots - especially birds. I wanted to identify each of them and have National Geographic Complete Birds of North America, Smithsonian Birds of North American Eastern Region and other books. But, I always use the Kaufman Birds of North America first and generally find what I need in it. Sometimes after referring back and forth between books, it is the Kaufman that resolves the question. Now, the National Geographic and Smithsonian do have a greater amount of information on a given bird. But this Kaufman book can't be beat for ease of use and generally being very, very complete in coverage of the birds.
A reasonable alternative to Peterson's, but reasonable people can disagree March 20, 2006
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
About myself: I've been birding for all of three months, not really taking walks for the purpose of birding or making IDs until this past Christmas Bird Count. So I imagine I fall right in the target demographic for this work. My impression of the several times I've built a stack of several guides to look at something I've seen is that the Sibley Guide and its Eastern and Western children compete with the National Geographic Field Guide for the top/experienced birder and comparisons between one of those and the Kaufman's guide are rather silly, different purpose. Kaufman himself mentions that he leaves out things such as variants which experienced birders want because he was aiming at the less experienced birder. That leaves guides such as Peterson's, Stokes, the Golden Guide and the American Bird Conservancy 'All The Birds of North America' as comparisons.
I agree that Kaufman has improved greatly on the other photographic based guides. The other photo guides I've seen suffer from the fact that their photos are too good (paradoxically). Since the overwhelming majority of birds I see are under clouds or trying their best to be inconspicuous, the vibrancy of, say, Stokes actually makes it harder to ID the bird. Kaufman's use of the arrows to highlight field marks and putting similar birds on the same page a la Peterson guides helps a lot as well. The Golden Guide does not quite measure up since it is harder to tell what to look for in the absense of field marks in the descriptions. And the order of 'All the Birds' I find hard to work with.
The real comparison for the Kaufman Field Guide is the Peterson Field Guide. I have purchased both, and each of them spend time in my pocket. I tend to favor Peterson because the pictures are larger (5th edition), for some birds it includes a number of variants (which Kaufman deliberately omits) and the pictures are sharper (I can abstract the natural blending of colors myself)so the difference between sharp boundaries and more blended boundaries of color are actually meaningful (e.g. Carolina and Black-capped chickadees). And I actually find the closer to taxonomic order easier to navigate (since families that are close tend to be close to each other). The Kaufman quick tabs get me to the right part of the book, but within the tab I often end up flipping through all the pages. The taxonomy (as a non-biologist) order actually becomes someone ingrained quick enough, which I imagine makes sense, since it is based on physical reality.
Of course, between Peterson and Kaufman, I would echo the advice that you actually have to look at both to pick one (if pick one you must). The styles are different enough that I find both useful, and I always look at the other one when I get back home. Much of the question is if the use can get past the abstraction of the painting to real life viewing, or if they give up the shown details for the more realistic texture that the touched up photographs can give even when the improved depiction of texture probably does not help for identification in field conditions.
 Successor to Peterson? January 7, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I suspect that most birders who like the Peterson field guides will embrace Kenn Kaufman's _Field Guide to Birds of North America_. It's from the same publisher (Houghton Mifflin) and (in my mind) bears a striking resemblance in size and format; in his dedication Kaufman acknowledges Peterson's legacy. Perhaps this guide stakes a claim as the successor to the RTP guides, and I certainly welcome the decision to cover the continent in one volume.
However, in the field I rely more heavily on the National Geographic guide, supplemented first by one of the compact Sibley guides and then a Peterson guide. This new work takes that third place in my own field reference hierarchy, relegating the older Peterson guides to the status of at-home reference.
The illustrations are worth noting. According to the title page, the guide contains "more than 2,000 images digitally edited by the author and based on photos by more than 80 top photographers". I happen to believe that Kaufman has overcome the shortcomings of typical photographic guides; the illustrations render birds that are at once life-like and representative. I'm only now forming first impressions, but I was surprised by the absence of in-flight images for a couple of gull species.
Beginners (and others) will appreciate the introductory essay and the summaries preceding some families or other groups (gulls, true seabirds, and warblers, for example).
great 'search and find' type of book September 30, 2005
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Extremely well categorized by color coordinating types of birds. To find a bird you simply look under the category it belongs to (f.e. hummingbirds or chicken-like birds,...)and then simply browse through excellent pictures. It sure makes it easy and enjoyable. I browsed through a lot of bird books and this is the BEST one I saw.
Beginner buys birding book September 19, 2005
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Organized by appearance and characteristics, rather than species, this book is easiest to use by beginners to intermediates. Its handy size encourages having it with you. I like the checkbox with every entry. It's easy to start a life list. Illustrations are exceptionally clear, especially for the way we often see birds, from behind and going away. This book will serve until you're a fanatic and want to use Sibley's, This is the birding book for 'the rest of us."
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