Customer Reviews

Birds of Eastern North America: A Photographic Guide (Princeton Field Guides)

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

 

 

These two new books from Princeton (I include the companion Western North America guide simultaneously released) represent the latest of the recent offerings for North American bird guides utilizing photographs to illustrate the birds, joining the National Wildlife Federation guide from 2007 and the Smithsonian guide from 2008. Bird field guides in general are based on either an artist's representations of the birds or photographs, with pros and cons for each, and the debate over which is superior goes on and on - I will not elaborate here, but I will describe some specifics for each of the three different books and thus compose a review applicable to all of them.

This new Princeton guide is the only one which divides the continent into East and West in separate volumes; both NWF and Smithsonian cover both coasts in one book, and thus are thicker (over 500 pages each) and correspondingly quite heavy. This decision of the authors/editors and publisher is another of the big bird guide debates, and again I will not try to argue which is better, but certainly there is a great deal of duplication of entries (birds found across the entire continent or right in the middle) in a 2-volume set, so simply adding the pages or weight together isn't really a fair comparison. A more appropriate distinction involves examination of the visual layout possible in each approach. Here the need for full NA coverage in the Smithsonian and NWF guides forces a compact presentation, with two or sometimes three bird entries including brief text and small photographs all on the same page, while the fewer species to be covered in the half-continental approach allows the Princeton guide to print much larger photographs on the right-hand page with text (and frequently additional small photos) on the left, again in two or three species groups. The result for the Princeton guide is far more "reader-friendly" in terms of typeface, range map interpretation, and most notably, in the appearance of the birds themselves - each species shown truly jumps off the page in a visual sense. No doubt this impact is amplified by the editing of the photographs (which must have been accomplished via computer assistance along the lines of the Kaufman Focus guide) with the result that frequently the bird images overlap into the adjacent photo's background. Both of the other photographic guides use traditional images which are cropped to fit, with the Smithsonian book including some inset photos.

The text for the Princeton guides is much more extensive as would be expected for the space available. Bullet points are used in the Smithsonian guide, and identification features are placed either on each photograph (NWF guide) or directly alongside each photograph (Smithsonian) in order to maximize room for the photos, but text description of other information is by necessity limited in these two guides. Princeton includes the usual description of appearance in sentence form, with sections for voice, habitat, and behavior, but also adds a unique section for each bird called "Observation Tips" where a blurb describes how to separate similar species or in what circumstances a bird is best found. This is a great idea, but is often simply too general to be very useful.

The core of these books, of course, are the photographs themselves. As mentioned above from the standpoint of photographic size and clarity, the Princeton guide is much the superior work. I go to a photographic guide in order to see an image of a real bird, but real birds tend to vary quite a bit in appearance, so therefore I want to see as many examples as I can find - hence my library contains all three of these guides, and the best guide would have multiple photos of each bird. I also want these collections of photographs to be as inclusive as possible; ideally the entire American Birding Association checklist will be depicted in at least some form of image. None of these guides is perfect in these regards, and probably no portable volume ever could be. But along these lines the biggest fault I find in the Princeton guide is the significant absence of quite a few species which I would assume any comprehensive NA guide would include. In the Princeton guide's Introduction, under a heading of The Choice of Species, the authors state that "All our resident species are included here, as well as seasonal visitors to the region ...". This is most certainly not accurate in my view, and I will provide a few examples. Pelagic birders will be disappointed to find only 8 shearwaters in the combined Princeton volumes and exactly zero gadfly petrels, versus 11 shearwaters and 8 petrels in the NWF guide and 10 shearwaters and 6 petrels in the Smithsonian. If the Princeton guide were your only source, you would not know that tropicbirds even existed. Only by arguing that "the region" does not include oceanic waters less than 200 miles offshore can one agree with not choosing more of these birds for inclusion in a guide. Vagrants which are predictable visitors such as White-eared Hummingbird or rather frequent arrivals such as Curlew Sandpiper are not in the Princeton guide (but are in both of the others); rarities which an observant birder will have a chance to see in our region but are not in the Princeton offering include Eared Quetzal and White-collared Seedeater (again both are in the other guides). A publication as recent as the Princeton guide would be expected to portray Common Mynah now that the ABA has placed it on its checklist as being resident in Florida, but it is not there, as it is in last year's Smithsonian guide. Finally, Gray Hawk is a summer resident of southern Arizona, and Tropical Parula is a year-round resident of southern Texas (they are scarce and local, but still resident), yet these birds are not found in the Princeton guide, as they are in the others. In my mind these omissions are indicative of considerably less than rigorous authorship, especially when the stated aim of the book was to be all-inclusive.

In the final analysis the Princeton guide is superb for the photographs it includes, but rates only four stars due to the ones it does not include. Both of the other guides would also rate four stars due to the required compression of their imagery, with extra marks for the scope of their coverage. In my mind all have their greatest value in providing a view of the bird in the most realistic fashion possible for preliminary study prior to venturing out to the field, and in confirming identifications after the fact. I will continue to use an art-based book for my principal field guide (and for my secondary one as well), but will now use the Princeton guide as a third-level reference.

This is certainly the best photo guide I have seen; the pictures are crisp and well-chosen. I have no misgivings about recommending is for a birder's library. But as a book to carry into the field, it has drawbacks. For example, there is no quick index (2 pager); you must plow through the dense, full index in fine print, useless in the field. The reader may have some trouble with diagnostic marks on the birds; I did, Nevertheless, I find myself using it frequently at home.

Excellent book - this is just what we were looking for! This book has excellent photos of both mature and juvenile birds as well as male and female. We have been able to identify several birds already that we were not familiar with.

There are quite a number of photo field guides out there. I still use Kaufman, but this is getting a lot of use by me for warblers and sparrows. Shorebirds and gulls look good too, but have not put those to a test.

No book is perfect. This is a really good effort, but at times I prefer illustrated guides like Sibley.

I prefer this to the recent Stokes one volume, merely for compact size and easy comparison of related species.

Beginner birders are urged to leaf through East and West before buying or get a one volume book. Generally West is west of the Rockies. It is not very well indicated here. Sometimes a West volume may cover half of Nebraska. The East does not cover American Dipper, so no Colorado and West seems to be the rule.

The pictures are very good. While they are 'touched-up' a little, they don't make the bird look unrealistic.

It is not a complete field guide, as not all birds are in it.

The pictures may on occasion help you to identify birds that the artwork drawings of illustrated guides do not.

Going through each section of the book, I typed up a quick index of 149 entries in alphabetical order, and using photo scrapbook type glue, glued it to the inside back cover. It did not take long.

I used a 9 X 12 sheet of self-adhesive plastic laminate to reinforce the insufficient cover. A 10 X 13 would be better.

I ordered 3 books, 2 eastern, one western, both hardcover.

I returned all three, the binding was defective.

They sent me three new ones, all the bindings were defective.

too bad, nice pictures.