Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America (Paperback)

by Ted Floyd (Author)
Key Phrases: common grackle, strategy moderate differences, complex basic strategy, North America, West Coast, Old World (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This new field guide provides a suite of modern tools to effectively aid in the identification of more than 750 species of birds across North America. It introduces a "whole bird" approach by concisely gathering a collection of information about birds into one portable and well-organized volume.

• 2,000 stunning color photographs of birds in natural habitats show the most important field marks, regional population differences, life stages, and behaviors
• 700-plus detailed and up-to-date color range maps show summer, migration, winter, year-round, and rare but regular occurrences of every major species
• A DVD of birdsongs for 138 major species (587 vocalizations in all for 5½ hours of play); each high-quality MP3 file is embedded with an image of the bird, perfect to view on home computers and portable MP3 players
• Concise descriptions of habits and ecology, age-related and seasonal differences, regional forms, vocalization, and informative captions pointing out the most important aspects of the bird
• 46 group essays with information outlining taxonomy, feeding, migration, habitats, behaviors, and conservation status
• A thorough and accessible introduction to birds and birding includes sections on parts of a bird, plumage and molt, food and feeding, migration, habitats, conservation, tips on bow to become a better birder, and more
• A detailed glossary of terms, species checklist, and quick index

The new Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America is perfectly designed to give birders the most powerful and user-friendly collection of information to carry into the field or wherever they enjoy learning about birds and nature.

A Look (and Listen) Inside the Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America
Click on an image below to sample one of the 587 different downloadable bird songs included with the guide.

American Wigeon	Common Loon	Mallard
Red-Winged Blackbird	Mourning Dove	Northern Cardinal

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From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. This new Smithsonian field guide, written by Birding magazine editor Floyd, is ideal for beginners, but also has formidable resources for experienced birders. What gives this guide the most value is the included CD-ROM, with 587 songs and calls (for 138 bird species) in mp3 format. Not only are they an immense improvement on written descriptions (frequently incomprehensible), they're field-ready-just download them onto your favorite mp3 player. The text is generally thorough, but the focus is on images; each bird's entry is accompanied by at least two photographs and often more, showing specimens in flight, variations in coloring, and differences among males, females and juveniles. Compared with similar guides from National Geographic, Floyd's has considerably less textual description, helpful in identifying rarer birds and hybrids, but the strikingly crisp photography compensates. Appropriate for even elementary-age readers, the book's excellent range maps are very clear, and the introduction to each group is readable and highly informative. Clean design, sharp (not heavy) print and moisture-resistant materials make it perfect for field use. Birders of any experience level will be happy with this volume on their bookshelf.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks; Pap/DVD edition (May 27, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061120405
• ISBN-13: 978-0061120404
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (64 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #28,542 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WONDERFUL ADDITION TO MY BIRD LIBRARY, July 23, 2008

By	D. Blankenship (The Ozarks) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

(What's this?)

While I certainly do not consider myself an expert birder, I have been active in this wonderful pastime for around fifty years now. I do spend quite a lot of time in the field and my wife and I do travel quite a lot, she perusing her interests and mine. My first field guide was the old Roger Tory Peterson publication; actually it was the 1941 edition, which I still have. My goodness, we have come along way.

This new Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds is an absolute delight to use and a delight to the eye and ear. It is a rather large and heavy book, quite a lot larger than your average guide and weighs probably close to two pounds. This may not seem like much on a short stroll through the park, but it is of major consideration when spending day after day in the field, much of it walking. That cannot be helped though, as the size is indeed needed to record the plethora of information found between its covers. The book is well bound, which is very important. I have had more than one guide over the years that I have completely destroyed simply from over use and dragging in through the bush. I must admit that I have not had this particular book long enough to truly abuse it, but I suspect that it will hold up better than most. A day or two crouching in a swamp should tell that tale.

The book is arranged in order of families and not color or general habitat, which may take some getting use to for the beginning birder. This is really of minor concern though and of little moment. Each species addressed in this book is covered by some of the best bird photographs I have seen in any field guide at any time. In most cases we get a photograph of the female, male and juvenile. In addition, when appropriate there is a photo of the bird in molt and out. All of these photographs are of top quality. There is a range map provided with each species which covers breeding, winter, year-round, migration and rare ranges. This is most useful. As another reviewer pointed out, we are in a very dynamic period of flux at this time and some bird ranges are going through drastic changes. A current range map is quite necessary and this work provides that. Information given on each species includes measurements and average weights, molt periods, differences between mature and adult birds, geographic variations, if any and a nice written example of their call, which I find most accurate. Many of the photographs feature the bird in both flight (very helpful) and setting. Both the common name and the scientific name are given. Each bird is given its ABA Code for each area, again, most useful.

There is a nicely written and informative introduction to each family of birds. There are many little side notes of interest sprinkled here and there throughout the book addressing particular problems of identification of particular birds. Of course there is the DVD which includes 587 recordings and is completely down loadable. This is a very nice DVD and the quality is great. Now there are only 138 species of birds represented on this DVD which may be a problem for some. Personally, even after all these years, I still have problems identifying even 50 birds by their call, but then I have a tin ear for such things. Other reviews have noted, as does the book, that these songs are down loadable to a MP3 Player. To be quite frank, I have not a clued what an MP3 is, so I will take their word for it.

I do highly recommend this work. I must say though that I would strongly suggest you have a couple of other field guides stuck in your pack. No one book will fill all of your needs as to identification. I still lug around a copy of Peterson's guide (a more current copy than the 1941 edition I mentioned) and still find it quite useful. I personally like bird drawings to supplement bird photographs as I find having the two make identification much easier. This is particularly true with shore birds. The only complaint I have with this particular book, and it is a very minor complaint and is more my problem than that of the book, is that I wish the shade of ink used could have been darker. The light color with the thin font is rather difficult for me to read in dim light. This is just me though, and perhaps younger eyes will have no problems. All in all though, this is an outstanding guide and I do not see how you could possibly go wrong with it.

D. Blankenship

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent North American photographic field guide, June 2, 2008

By	James L. Spingarn "bird&aircraft book lover" (Glen Head, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As a companion to the better artwork illustated field guides such as National Geographic's, Sibley's or Peterson's, this photographic guide is a very worthwhile addition. It is the proper field-size and covers the important identification points, excellent up-to-date maps, interesting sidebars of relevant information, sizes in inches and weight in pounds and ounces (tired metric measurements?), brief summary of voice and an excellent included DVD with 587 downloadable birdsongs.

All photos are excellent and usefully descriptive by sex and age or seasonal plumage and important subspecies. Highly recommended!

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful book worthy of taking a spot on your reference shelf. , July 23, 2008

By	Biffybeans "rockin' the shekere" (Northeast, PA) - See all my reviews

(What's this?)

There is no doubt that this book is well worth it's price for the information it contains, but for an avid birder like myself, it's hard to not compare it to the old standby, Peterson Field Guide(R) to Eastern Birds: Fourth Edition (Peterson Field Guides). (Eastern or Western North American editions.)

When I first started birding over 15 years ago, I started with a similar field guide that showed photographs of the birds rather than illustrations. While an illustrated field guide may not be as "pretty" it's much more consistent in being able to show the exact markings you will expect to see in a given species. Try to identify a fall warbler and you'll see what I mean. (Fall warblers are not as colorful as their spring counterparts which makes them much more difficult to identify.) I graduated to the Peterson's illustrated guides and have been using them faithfully ever since.

In this Smithsonian edition, the images are beautiful and attempt to show the variety on male/female/juvenille/seasonal plumages. The size, wingspan, weight, typical habitat, song description and a range map are included on every page of every species. Peterson's guides make you flip to the back of the book for the range maps and this is much easier.

Songs on the DVD go from species to species without an announcement of what species you hearing, unlike the other CD's of bird songs that I've listened to. If you are listening to the songs on an MP3 player, or in a program like Windows Media player, images of the current vocalizing bird display as album art which is a nice touch. Even if you aren't listening to specifically learn the birds, it's very pretty to hear the songs run from one to the next, like being in the woods with them.

The book includes a description of each family at the beginning of each section. There is also a species checklist at the back of the book.

One thing I missed in this book are the bird of prey silhouette images from Peterson's book. The silhouettes are very helpful for bird of prey identification when spotting them against a sunny sky.

I believe this book is too big to use as a practical field guide, both in physical size, and number of species unless you are taking a cross country bird watching expedition.

I'm also not sure that the cover would hold up in the long run, as it's not as durable as the cover on the Peterson's guide. The size and weight of this book might cause it to get beat up quicker than it should.

The DVD is secured to the inside of the back cover, and I personally don't like keeping a disc in a book as it makes the book hard to handle. This might be petty, but when I tried to remove the disc pouch, it was very secure and caused me to tear up the inside back cover.

All in all, I'm still giving it 5 stars for the amount of information you get for the money. It's a beautiful book worthy of taking a spot on your reference shelf.