The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America (Turtleback)

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Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Not just spin-offs from the famed Sibley Guide to Birds, these field guides are specifically designed to tote along on outings. The maps are new.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description

The Sibley Guide to Birds has quickly become the new standard of excellence in bird identification guides, covering more than 810 North American birds in amazing detail. Now comes a new portable guide from David Sibley that every birder will want to carry into the field. Compact and comprehensive, this new guide features 703 bird species plus regional populations found west of the Rocky Mountains. Accounts include stunningly accurate illustrations—more than 4,600 in total—with descriptive caption text pointing out the most important field marks. Each entry contains new text concerning frequency, nesting, behavior, food and feeding, voice description, and key identification features. Accounts also include brand-new maps created from information contributed by 110 regional experts across the continent.

The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America is an indispensable resource for all birders seeking an authoritative and portable guide to the birds of the West.

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Product Details

• Turtleback: 472 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (April 29, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679451218
• ISBN-13: 978-0679451211
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 4.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (57 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #5,573 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

106 of 119 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A disappointing compromise, May 12, 2003

By	Carpalis (Tucson, AZ) - See all my reviews

Of the making of many books there is no end, and so here we have another volume from David Sibley, author of the (large) Sibley Guide, hands-down the best field guide available to North American birds. Even that book has its disadvantages, though, and Sibley (or rather, one is forced to suspect, his publishers) has sought to remedy two of them--namely, its physical weight and misleading range maps--by dividing it into two considerably more portable volumes. Unfortunately, while the book now fits into generously proportioned pockets, and while the maps are tremendously improved (residents of BC, AB, and Nunavut may disagree...), the new layout made necessary by the smaller format essentially vitiates the original guide's great advantages. Gone are the startlingly large-scale images, replaced by what are for most species literally thumbnail-sized illustrations (well, I've got biggish thumbs); for most species, the images now float in the gutters and margins next to the text. The captions to these images still provide a tremendous amount of information, in a few cases even more information or more clearly stated than in the "big" Sibley. But the cramped layout means that it is impossible to compare some similar species without flipping pages; Western and Cassin's Kingbirds, for example, are on different openings. The great strength of the original guide was the vertical orientation of the species accounts, and now that that is gone, the book barely holds its own against the more traditionally designed and meatier NatGeo. I suspect that birders sophisticated enough to use this volume efficiently will not need it; and those who need it will find it frustratingly cluttered.

42 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not great for the field, May 30, 2005

By	Starry Vere (Silver Lake OH USA) - See all my reviews

While the Big Sibley Guide mostly deserves the praise it has received, the smaller Field Guides are a disappointment. They don't have the great knack that Peterson's, for example, has for giving you the precise few things you need for quick identification in the field.
For instance, I recently visited southern California for the first time and saw cormorants with blue throat patches. My Sibley Field Guide was not particularly helpful. Upon returning home, I saw that my other guides, Peterson, National Geographic, Golden, made it clear that it was Brandt's cormorant in its breeding plumage. A fine point, perhaps, but an unforgivable omission in a book that aspires to be a standard reference. I won't take it out into the field anymore.

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exceptional, April 11, 2004

By	Christopher Lamonica "LaMonica, PhD" (Wellington, NZ) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The larger Sibley field guide caused quite a stir but it was also a bit of a bear, in terms of size. The smaller guides that focus on east and west, are much easier to carry. Everything about them is, really, as good as it gets: the paintings, the maps, the descriptions - a top quality product.