Customer Reviews

Birding Washington (Birding Series)

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Since I'm planning a future birding trip to Washington state, I purchased this book as a reference for planning and executing my trip. I own several "Falcon Guides", and have found them all to be very informative and useful, until now. The information within this book is excellent, but finding what you want is VERY difficult. I can't believe anyone would publish a book/guide such as this and not include any place-names in the back-of-the-book index!!! The index is comprised entirely of bird names. Every other Falcon Guide I own has place-names in the index. Where was the editor on this?

I picked this book up to help plan some birding stops on a business trip to Washington State, as I've never spent any time birding in Washington. While it does have a fair amount of good information about potential birding locations, I found the book difficult to use.

First and foremost, for those unfamiliar with Washington's geography, the location maps in the book provide little in the way of reference; outside of the Seattle area, the maps don't often offer much to go by, rarely placing cities or even major highways on the maps in any meaningful way. For example, I planned to bird primarily in the Tri-cities (Richland, Kennewick, and Pasco) area in central-to-southeastern Washington; though I was able to find some sites I knew to be in that area (like Hanford Reach), it was tough to piece together a logical loop or series of daytrips using the maps in the book, and I never saw any of those communities on the maps.

This lacking is in contrast to the other Falcon guides I've used, such as their Birding Northern California, which in general make it easy to zero-in on a particular area and explore many nearby sites easily.

I suggest birders interested in Washington instead consider A Birder's Guide to Washington; although Amazon rarely carries the ABA guides (and when they do, the books tend to be much pricier than if obtained straight from the American Birding Association or a local birder's or nature store), the ABA guide for Washington provides more in-depth information as well as a much easier-to-navigate (no pun intended) organization of the birding sites.

this book is what i belive one of the best book on places to bird in washington. the book includes 70 washington sites and each site is given a profile that tells you what birds are there and when where to go to see them it also includes dirictions, nearby oppurtunities and the avalibility of camping. they also shows a map of the site and the surrounding area. this book is your best bet for finding washington birds for full profiles and more details on the birds of washington i would reccomend: Birds of Washington State

this book tells you where to find birds but does not really help identify them. It is great for planning a birding trip but you need another book for identifying the birds you see quickly.