Customer Reviews

All the Birds of North America : American Bird Conservancy's Field Guide

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have been interested in birding for about ten years, and own several other bird guides, and have examined closely several more. As you might imagine, most guides share quite a lot in common. If I were using a field guide to simply look at a backyard bird, I might equally well use my Peterson's Guide or my NGS Field Guide to the Birds of North America. All three of these guides have good art and organization, and are very usable. I think this is the best guide for FIELD use for several reasons: 1) The size and shape easily fit in a normal pocket. 2) The weather resistant materials the book is made of. 3) The way birds are grouped, by similarities in behavior, habitat, and appearance, allows for easy comparison and rapid identification of a species. The authors have obviously put a lot of thought into the design and organization of this book and it has a lot to offer both the beginning and advanced birder.

I've birded for more than 40 years, and I've used all the guides. This may seem heretical, but I have too much trouble with ambiguous identifications when carrying the much-vaunted National Geographic guide. I recommend this ABC (Griggs) guide along with Sibley's as the very top choices: Sibley's when you don't mind carrying 2 ¾ lb, and this one when you do. The best feature of this book, and the one that keeps me studying it at night, is that it is much more than an illustrated list. It explains what to look for in separating similar species. If you tend to throw up your hands at "LBJ's" (little brown jobs, meaning sparrows and other brown passerines), you need to read the detailed explanations in this book for orientation. It has equally useful introductory material for many bird groups. The unconventional organization is no impediment: I like the way birds are grouped primarily by similarity and secondarily by habitat.

With so many birding field guides available these days, birders suffer from a veritable embarrassment of riches when it comes to selecting which volume(s) to take into the field. Even in the face of still competition, this still fairly new guide put together by the American Bird Conservancy has many strong points to recommend it. First, the illustrations are, for the most part, gorgeously painted and well-printed. Second, there is adequate emphasis on key identification field marks. Third, the book is small enough to be easily carried in a jacket pocket or field guide pouch. And fourth, although no single field guide can really be said to include "all the birds," this one comes close enough, and even features some special sections and illustration plates showing "accidentals" that occasionally show up in North America.

If there is a key problem for potential users of this guide, it is that its authors have daringly attempted to create a new way to organize the presentation of the many hundreds of species included. Rather than follow the taxonomic approach typical of other field guides, the authors have organized in part in accordance with habitat and geographical area. For novice birders unfamiliar with the way it's "usually done," this may prove quite convenient. For experienced birders, however, this distinctive organization will likely prove the source of headaches rather than added convenience.

The other problem with this and indeed, any field guide that is more than a year or so old is that ornithologists are constantly lumping and splitting species. With its 1997 publication date, the book is recent enough to have included some important "splits," including the California/Black-tailed gnatcatchers and the California/Canyon towhees. However, there are more recent changes that have occurred since 1997, including the newly recognized Gunnison sage grouse and the splitting off of Arizona from Strickland's woodpecker. Hopefully, the publishers of *All The Birds* will employ a periodic updating regimen to keep its readers current with regard to what is or is not considered a "real species."

Ultimately, the field guide that most avid birders will continue to carry with them in the field always is the *National Geographic Field Guide To The Birds of North America*. As a second and perhaps more portable reference, however, *All The Birds of North America* might be a good book to bring on one's field trips, as well.

Being an avid birder, this is by far the best book to take into the field. Its new design makes it extremely quick to find the bird simply by looking at its basic shape and behavior. My favorite part is how it organizes its warblers into Eastern, Western, wingbars, no wing bars, etc. Although it doesn't have as many versions of species as the National Geographic guide, it is much more field worthy being smaller and easier. Being an advanced birder, when I say easier, I do not therefore limit it to the beginner. Every birder must admit he or she has problems with certain birds. This field guide is superb at every kind of bird (particularly difficult ones like gulls, warblers, etc.). The illustrations are the most beautiful and accurate I have ever seen. The section at the beginning with computer generated images of extinct birds is very interesting (and helpful, too if you happen to find a remnant flock of Bachman's warblers). It is much more up to date and has better illustrations than Peterson (not to mention that this has maps on the same page). It beats Audubon by having illustrations instead of photographs, more plumages of species, and the descriptions and maps on the same page as the bird. It surpasses Golden with it's better illustrations and easier to understand format. It does, however, lack some important plumage variations in certain birds (i.e. the ruff). But next to everything else it is the most superb guide I have ever used.

I bought this book for the terrific artwork in the section on ducks, geese and shorebirds. A lot of my bird-watching is at the shore and lakeside, and these detailed, precise drawings have been very helpful. The drawings of warblers and vireos are weaker, I think. Also, it makes no sense to have the explanation of the maps and symbols in the middle of the book, instead of at the beginning. I wouldn't make this my only bird book. (I have a very old version of the Golden Field Guide that I still use.) It is a very useful 2nd book.

Basically this is a try at a new organizational scheme for field guides - by habitat, generally. It doesn't really work for me when I'm hiking somewhere. On the other hand, it can be useful to read before you go out, to see the types of things you might find in a given place you're headed for.

The organizational idea of putting species together by habitat is interesting, but it's not really that helpful when you're trying to ID something you're seeing. For example, a beginner sees a field sparrow singing in a smallish tree near some brushy growth on a rising slope above a wetland: What habitat is that? In the book, I mean. Quick, the bird's getting away.

The essays in the book are nice, as another review mentions. Next to books like the Birders Handbook or Kenn Kaufmann's lives of North American Birds, though, this doesn't even come close to providing the full contextual information, about individual species, that you want from the book you left at home.

The art, as one of the positive reviews mentioned above, is hit and miss. There are times when birds are painfully wrong. When I have a borderline bird, one I have doubts about, and I check it in the National Geographic Society guide and in Griggs, the difference in the detail and overall quality of the paintings is sometimes embarrassing. NGS has postures right; this book has the body shape wrong a fair amount of the time. There are some really lovely images, and some dogs.

I bought this, from Amazon actually, hoping it would give me a sometimes, when-I-feel-like-it replacement for my battered old NGS guide. It is, as I say, a decent complement to your field guide, but it's not a replacement for it. It's basically a middling helper ID book you can refer to at home when the ID is confused. It's also nice to read before you head out at all.

I find this to be an okay complement to the field guides I *would* choose to bring in my pocket when I go out birding.

The standard guide for birds by Roger Tory Peterson is being challenged by this comprehensive collection from the American Bird Conservancy.

The differences are evident as soon as you turn to the first page. There is a chart "How to Identify Birds," turned sideways, with a list of bird outlines divided into type (where they're seens, the shape of their bills), each accompanied by a number of possible bird types. Each line yields a page number. Continue holding the book sideways, you flip to the proper page number (which are printed sideways as well, indicating the thought put into organizing the information), where -- turn the book proper, please! -- you find a selection of bird illustrations to match with your sighting.

Subtle signals dot the pages to guide you on your quest. Musical notes indicate if the bird sings, and gives a general idea of how; names are color-coded according to how scarce they are.

But it is in organization and presentation of information that this book shines, and you realize with a start that all birding books should look like this. It really is an imaginative breaththrough.

This field guide is one of the best I've seen. Like all guides, it does have a few shortcomings: The introductory material is placed in the middle of the book rather than at the beginning, and the quality of the art varies greatly, from the absolutely beautiful work of Alderfer and Van Dusen (especially appreciated in shorebirds and gulls), and the less stunning but wholly acceptable vireos and warblers of McQueen, to the less satisfactory presentation of sparrows and the quite misshapen birds in the "Arctic birds" section.

Those criticisms aside, this is a superior field guide. The format does not allow for lengthy descriptions of species, and the very toughest ID problems still require more attention than this book can give them, but in most cases the birds are illustrated (in proper habitat!) and described more than well enough to result in accurate identifications.

The pages which introduce each group of birds (e.g. "Pelagic birds", "Wading birds", "Raptors") are to me one of the best parts of the book. A great deal of useful information, ranging from anatomical terminology to behavior to conservation, is presented in these short (1/2 to 3 pages)essays. The heavy focus on conservation is an important inclusion: birdwatchers, more than most people, should realize that our actions are directly affecting (and usually harming) the objects of our sport/hobby/study/obsession; this guide makes that very clear.

Comparatively speaking, I'd rank this guide roughly parallel to the much-praised National Geo guide, which has more illustrations of some species (and even worse sparrow paintings!) but less on status and conservation. The Griggs guide generally has better written descriptions and more definitions of terms than National Geo. I would definitely prefer the Griggs guide as a general field guide for a beginning or intermediate birder. And I think that even more advanced birders who don't often refer to field guides (and likely own and use the in-depth identification guides and articles on sparrows, shorebirds, gulls, et cetera) could appreciate this guide for some of its lovely artwork and its emphasis on conservation.

I have been a birdwatcher for many years and have several field guides on bird identification. Some of them, I never take out in the field, though. The main reason is that I don't feel confident enough with the drawings in them. I don't feel that way about this field guide, however. I got All the Birds of North America three years ago. It's one of my favorite bird identification guides. I have enough confidence in it to actually use it when I go birdwatching. The drawings of the birds are very good. They are also in full color and feature habitat backgrounds. The guide is weather-resistant and in a pocket-size format, too. The range maps are on the same page as the drawings and text descriptions of the birds. The text descriptions of the birds are very helpful and clear. The birds are organized by field-recognizable, instantly-observable characteristics. All the Birds of North America is one of my favorite field guides. It has really helped me. I recommend it.

This book is a very useable field guide for beginning birders. The book is organized to help you identify birds as quickly as possible. First, you decide whether you are looking at a water bird or a land bird; the first part of the book covers water birds, and the second part land birds. If you're looking at a land bird, you next decide whether you've got a large bird or a small one. The section on large birds has small silhouettes of the birds' shapes in the margin, while the section on small birds shows the birds' beaks. By flipping through these small drawings in the margins, you can easily narrow down the bird you are looking at to a few pages. Then you look at the numerous color illustrations, the range maps, the short descriptions, and the song patterns to help you determine the identity of your bird. For further information, each chapter starts with a short article that describes the morphology and behavior of the group of birds that are covered in the chapter. Scientific names are included for each bird, and rare or endangered birds are highlighted.

As a rank beginner bird watcher, I found the book extremely easy to use and informative. The color illustrations, because they are idealizations, were much more accurate and easier to use than the color photographs that appear in some other field guides. The descriptions of each bird are rather short, leaving me hungry for more details, but this book is a great place to start.