Customer Reviews

Birds of Michigan (Field Guides)

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

 

 

This is the easiest to use field guide I have ever seen. This small (4 1/2" X 6") pocket guide has divided the birds by color. Two full pages are devoted to each bird which include a full page color photograph, maps, and plenty of information. My favorite attribute of this book is that the author has included different pictures for males and females when necessary. For instance, you can find the male cardinal in the red section and the female in the brown section. If you live in Michigan and want an easy to use field guide -- this is it!

Being from Michigan, I was interested in having a easy-to-use pocket guide for birds, especially for those easily confused warblers. This book has quality photos that accompany each species. The book only covers 112 species of birds in Michigan. A quick skim through the book reveals that the book is lacking such species as the gadwell (as well as many other ducks), black tern, spruce grouse, some plovers and waterbirds, caspian tern, the Kirtland's warbler, goshawk and other raptors, etc. etc. Many of these species can be locally abundent. A well-illustrated book, but not complete. I'm afraid that I'll still have to carry my other bird book out in the field. This book would be good for those common species, but as I said before, it is not a complete guide for all birds that can be found in Michigan. I also don't like the way they sort things out by color. I prefer to separate birds by family or genus. The photographs in this book gets a 5 star, the content a 2 star. Put them together and I feel this book deserves a 3 star review.

This is a very good book for Michigan birdwatchers who are just beginning to learn their birds. The birds are organized by color. This is very helpful to beginners, but bad for birders with a little experience. In the "brown" category the Mourning Dove is right next to the Pied-Billed Grebe. So the water fowl are spread all throughout the book, which is not helpful if you know enough about birds to at least know that what you are looking for is a water fowl. The same goes for all the other types of birds. Organization by color has its problems.

Still, the pictures are a rather good quality and the range maps are helpful, as are the author's comments about each bird.
In short, a very good book for beginners (and older children); not a book for birders with even a little experience.

This book should be the guideline for all other bird watcher books. There are so many features that make it easy enough for kids just starting out. The small glossy pages,color tab pages, real life photographs, range map and "stans notes" make identifying a bird easy, you spend less time flipping through a bulky book and more time watching the birds! The book features over 200 birds IN MICHIGAN. My husband and I take this book with us whenever we go out. Its small and sturdy enough that it fits right into our binoculor case.

I came across this book from a fellow classmate in my BIO 229 (Nature Study) course at CMU. We purchased the Peterson's Guides as part of the class material, but Tekiela's book is soooo much better! The real-life pictures and color codes make identification much easier and faster, and all of the birds featured are natives to Michigan. This is essential when you consider how quickly birds move around- you don't have time to wade through the Cranes and Puffins to find your species! I would recommend this to anyone with a birdfeeder or an interest in bird watching.

This book is an OK Michigan bird book. However, I have found that there are birds I have at my feeder that are not in this guide, so this certainly isn't an exhaustive guide. I would have liked it more if the index would list the birds in alphabetical order so that if I knew what bird it was, I would be able to look up more information about it but it is only arranged by the color of the bird. I also am not a huge fan of the pictures in the book. Many of the birds don't look like the pictures in the guide.

Overall, it would make a good secondary guide, but if this is the only bird book you buy, I think I would pick a different one.

What a great book! Really helps me identify my back yard "friends".
It arrived on time and in the conditiion described. Thank you.

I love this book! Large, accurate pictures and easy to use (the bird info is on the page opposite the pic, no more thumbing through to find it!). It deserves to be in every Michigan bird lover's library.