Customer Reviews

Birds of Alaska Field Guide

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My wife and I are amatuer birders and bought this book to help us identify birds during our two week trip to Alaska. The only positive thing I can say about the book is that the photos are of good quality. We found that it included only about half the birds we attempted to identify during our trip. The organization by bird color proved inefficient for field identification. After a few days, we only used the book to help confirm identifications we had made using other guide books (if the bird was actually in the Alaska Field Guide). We came to refer to it as the "worthless" book, as in "Let me take a look in the worthless book".

This is a great little book (definitely pocket sized). Great images, good information, good design. Do be careful though, this is not an advanced field guide. If you are looking for a field guide to take on a serious Alaskan birdwatching trip, look at getting the Sibley's Western or National geographic.

The book would be good for a casual or novice bird watcher or feeder watcher. The book is organized by bird color which would make more sense to a novice when compared to the family organization found in other guides.

If nothing else, it would make a great gift. Any birdwatcher would appreciate the quality of the photos. Especially good for daydreaming about that once in a lifetime Alaskan Birding trip.

I kept this guide handy during an 8-day trip to Alaska (Denali first, then the Kenai peninsula). Using the guide I was able to locate nearly every bird I saw, approx 20 birds total. The photos are very clear and the information helpful and lively. One flaw is the absence of a slot describing the "voice" of each bird. But Stan does mention songs and calls in many of his blurbs. I also would have appreciated a slot for "status" (i.e. common, rare, etc). But few guides provide that info. It's also strange to have the birds arranged by color rather than species groups. But the guide is aimed at amateurs.

The writing is lively and not overly scientific. It's refreshing to read the genial prose and the occasional touch of humor. Many popular guides (Sibley, Audubon) are too dry and clinical. Overall: very good book, and recommended for amateur to intermediate level bird fanciers. I checked out 3 different Alaska bird guides (I believe only 3 exist), and Stan Tekiela's is the best.

As an avid birder I should have known better than to order this book. Any Field Guide that is divided by color should be questioned. I found that very few of the birds that I saw in Alaska were even in this Field Guide, and it was of little help in identifying the new birds that I added to my life list.

Although the book has beautiful pictures it is not very useful for identifying birds. The pictures of the birds are sorted by color and most birds have several different colors or the colors change with the seasons so it is difficult to try to identify most birds using this book.

I was going to purchase a different book when I bought this one but ended up choosing this one because of the photography. I have been very disappointed in it.

This book is a great size for the hand and pocket and has a clever color coding index that shows on the side; however, as a field guide I don't think it functions very well to identify birds or guide birders to increase their skills and knowledge. For example, the chestnut-backed chickadee is filed as a brown bird, the black-capped and boreal as gray. All are multi-colored, how I would pick that one was brown and another gray is beyond me. Having them grouped as birds that are closely related is more useful to me.

On the plus side, I see that male and females are given their own pages when they are different colors (though I still have issues with the color categories). For example, female red-breasted merganser is categorized as brown, male is green, as is male common merganser; female common merganser is red. Granted, the American Ornithological Union order is confusing for beginners as well; however, once a beginner learns the order, it is applied against many field guides and checklists.

The migration and nest information may make this a fun "gee whiz" browsing book for people new to birds.

Any field guide is better than none.

I prefer Armstrong's Guide to the Birds of Alaska for its range, season and abundance information, but rely on Sibley's The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America for the field.