I have a couple of field guides to various flora and fauna that are as still good as new, due to the fact that they have been of little use to me.
Not so with this guide: with its now grubby, battered, curling pages and covers - this absolutely superb guide has been useful to me hundreds of times, and still has a lot more to give!
Originally purchased to identify birds visiting my backyard feeder, then carried into swamps and woods for an environmental study program, the "National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America" has lived up to its name perfectly! My issue is 8" by 5" by 1", has 480 pages, and features more than 800 birds of this continent.
The illustrations alone are worth buying this book for: each is a small work of art, and much better than any photographs that I could take. Add the all maps, information, introduction and indexes and all the reader needs is a pair of binoculars to learn about these wonderful creatures of the air.
I don't expect that this guide will ever completely outlive its usefulness. Climate change and encroaching civilization has so affected wildlife that familiar species disappear, are replaced by others not seen before in a given region, suddenly reappear again, then seemingly vanish again, at least for a while - or so in my observations.
All but a couple of readers have praised this guide completely, and I wholeheartedly agree with the majority: if you are interested in the birds in your area and want to know more about them, then spring for a copy!
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