Customer Reviews

The Birder's Handbook: A Field Guide to the Natural History of North American Birds

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book isn't as immediately appealing as some of its competition, and its organizational scheme, and heavy use of symbols, can put you off. Use it for a week, though. I agree with another review in being mildly frustrated with its excessive use of symbols, often when a tiny printed word would have done the same work. But it's indispensible, and I'd recommend it to everyone.

A number of unique choices set this one apart. At first I was somewhat irritated by the placing of broader essays on the right page next to the species descriptions on the left. Then, with long use, it became clear to me just how well that worked. It's the perfect browsing format - just right for when you go to learn more about the thing you just saw. Also, the essays are written above the individual species level, so you can start out reading about Cowbirds and end up understanding the issue of nest parasitism, and the human impact on birds that practice it, far more completely than you would if you'd read Kenn Kaufmann's individual species description. It works.

There are some formatting issues here that do puzzle me. I don't really see the virtue in ordering the birds to correspond with the order in the NGS guide. There are other guides, to begin with, and now that we're about to get a new NGS guide, even the page numbers are going to be wrong. In any case, I can't see how you'd easily flip from one book to the other unless you were reading them sequentially. Who does that?

But those are quibbles. This is a terrific book, quite useful as a complement to your field guide and very nice to just read through. It could use a face lift, but it's got a heart of gold.

When I'm not on the trading floor, I spend my free time watching birds. I would say that it wasn't until I picked up this essential birder's guide that I became an experienced and knowledgeable birder. This book increased my ability to identify birds, thus making bird watching infinitely more enjoyable. Since purchasing the Birder's Handbook, my weekend hobby has blossomed into an intense love for birds. I highly reccommend this to anyone with any level of interest in birding.

This is the book every birder needs to supplement her or his field guides. Intelligently organized and brilliantly indexed and cross-referenced it tells you concisely and in plain english what the field guides don't have room to tell you. It is also packed full of fascinating facts; for example, an oystercatcher opens bivalve shells in only one of two ways and it learns how to do this from its parents.

The left-hand pages each detail feeding, mating, nesting, habitat, conservation concerns, & much more, for a single species. As well as being described in text, basic information appears in icons at the top of the page, so you tell at a glance such things as preferred habitat, feeding patterns, breeding behavior, egg and nest appearance.

The right-hand pages contain essays which apply to more than one species (for example, bill shapes or learned feeding behaviors) or which are not species-related (for example, biographical sketches on the great ornithologists). I would buy this book just for these essays alone.

The species descriptions are in the usual AOU order and are cross-referenced to the major field guides.

This book is a joy to use and an absolute bargain.

I have found this book to be a valuable source of background information on North American birds. I take it off my shelf and use it with considerable frequency. I find, however, the extensive use of symbols to be an occasional source of frustration. Until one becomes well acquainted with the meaning of the various symbols (this coincides, roughly, with the time that the book's spine starts cracking), there will be considerable time spent flipping back to the front of the book to find the meaning of the symbols used.

Probably the most valuable aspect of the book is the extensive bibiography found in the back of the book. Not only do Ehrlich, Dobkin, and Wheye give you the basic information, they point you to more detailed sources of information.

Since this book is now several years old, we can hope that a new edition--with an updated bibliography and less reliance on symbols--will soon be in the works.

Definately not for the casual reader...

This book is really two books. One is a book on details of specific birds, the other a collection of essays on a wide ranging set of subjects. Both are very interesting and usable, but the book is structured such that the bird details are always on the left page, the essay on the right. Sometimes the essays are a fit with the bird details, sometimes not. Sometimes the essay continues on for several pages...

Purchase of this books should really be combined with either the old three volume Audubon Master Guide, or older editions of Peterson (west and east), or a couple of other older field guides. You may have to hunt used books for a match. As indicated in the reviews below, the detail pages are loaded with cryptic little symbols that reference specific plates and pages in these other older guides.

There is quite a lot of detail here, it is not a thin book, so don't plan on carrying it in the field much past the interior of your car. The size raises another issue. Updating this thing is not going to be an easy task. I suspect this 1988 edition is going to be what you get for a looong time.

This is a good book but you have to get used to the format and organization. To be honest I generally use one of my other books for id and basic info then I go to this book for more details. The details are fantastic though. I'd be very sad if I didn't have this in my collection because I learn a lot each time I use it. The format/use of symbols is just a bit awkward. Shouldn't deter you though - its great to have on hand

Great reference book, though NOT portable. Because this book came out in 1988, it needs updating: bird name changes have occured and there is more information from research to add to the wealth of information it already contains. Birder's Handbook uses various editions of field guides as reference points, that is, it points to particular pages of those field guides for a bird illustration or photo as well as range maps. And because those field guides have been updated in the intervening years, the page numbers are not true.
I look forward to another edition of this book!

When you are ready to move beyond simple identification of birds, your curiosity piqued by the avians on your feeder or flying over your canoe, this book is the answer. It is a big fat paperback, far too cumbersome for field use, but wonderful in its detail. Why do geese fly in a vee? How does a seagull's wing work? What materials do birds use to line their nests? Owls ears, hatching asynchronicity, communal roosting, head scratching, and promiscuity are a few among the hundreds of topics discussed in this work. There are brief biographies of early ornithologists, discussions of bird names and detailed advice on how a layperson can meaningfully contribute to the study of winged creatures (from the comfort of your feeder-viewing easy chair, if you like). This one's for the serious birder.

I was given this book as a gift, but I probably would not have bought it for myself.
Although it does have a lot of good information, it is difficult to read, and there are very few bird illustrations, so you need to have other references as well. It is really more of a bird encyclopedia than a field guide, and the author uses a lot of abbreviations and graphical symbols, requiring frequent look-ups in the front of the book to see what is meant by them.

Marshall Faintich, author of "A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Wintergreen"

Ok, this is NOT a field guide as the name would suggest. It is a reference book of bird biology. It includes information such as habitat preferences, nesting substrate, clutch size, diet, courtship rituals, which sex sits on the nest, etc. There are also short essays intersperced throughout the guide about various topics of ornithological interest. Not for the passive birder. Useful for researchers and serious birders.