Nat Geo Complete Birds of North America (the new Companion)
Hello, I just wanted to say that I've had the new "National Geographic Complete Birds of North America" for about a week now, and I've been thoroughly enjoying it. It is our 26th birding related book, and this one has a unique and valuable niche.
The book is quite large and and thick and is crammed with fine print text as well as over 4,000 illustrations. The average species entry is most of a large page of small print, and is anywhere from 300 to 1,000+ words (average about 500), with the emphasis on identification. This compares to maybe an average of 100 words per species in my (2nd edition) Nat Geo field guide, and more like 50-60 in Sibley (though the way he uses words pointing to paintings are worth many more). There are also multiple paintings per species (most of which are identical to the ones in the NG field guides), photos for each group, special sidebars on ID issues, migration maps as well as range maps, etc.
The book is not a field guide, but a large stay at home companion to field guides. It has more detail than any of my general purpose field guides, though less than my specialized reference works for raptors, gulls, warblers, etc. It covers 962 species, and where I really like it, is for the 800+ species for which I don't have specialized references. It has more information on general identification, similar species problems, subspecies and migration for birds like herons, ducks, flycatchers, owls, swallows, orioles, finches and so forth than any other book I have.
I find that I am using it is a companion, but to Sibley rather than the National Geographic guide, and they are quite a 1-2 combination! If I didn't have the specialized books, I would find the particularly lengthy treatments of gulls and raptors and so forth to be quite valuable as well.
Hello, I just wanted to say that I've had the new "National Geographic Complete Birds of North America" for about a week now, and I've been thoroughly enjoying it. It is our 26th birding related book, and this one has a unique and valuable niche.
The book is quite large and and thick and is crammed with fine print text as well as over 4,000 illustrations. The average species entry is most of a large page of small print, and is anywhere from 300 to 1,000+ words (average about 500), with the emphasis on identification. This compares to maybe an average of 100 words per species in my (2nd edition) Nat Geo field guide, and more like 50-60 in Sibley (though the way he uses words pointing to paintings are worth many more). There are also multiple paintings per species (most of which are identical to the ones in the NG field guides), photos for each group, special sidebars on ID issues, migration maps as well as range maps, etc.
The book is not a field guide, but a large stay at home companion to field guides. It has more detail than any of my general purpose field guides, though less than my specialized reference works for raptors, gulls, warblers, etc. It covers 962 species, and where I really like it, is for the 800+ species for which I don't have specialized references. It has more information on general identification, similar species problems, subspecies and migration for birds like herons, ducks, flycatchers, owls, swallows, orioles, finches and so forth than any other book I have.
I find that I am using it is a companion, but to Sibley rather than the National Geographic guide, and they are quite a 1-2 combination! If I didn't have the specialized books, I would find the particularly lengthy treatments of gulls and raptors and so forth to be quite valuable as well.
Last edited:
