Hello all,
I thought it would be useful to collect in one thread recommendations for the best books, CDs, or any other type of media that people have found especially useful for increasing their identification skills for North American birds beyond what is provided in standard guides, such as The Sibley Guide to the Birds, the National Geographic Field Guide to Birds of North America, etc. (I looked for other threads addressing this topic, but found none in the forum archives). I think there are two main categories: Works that address advanced identification skills for North American birds in general, and those that specialize in particular groups of hard to identify birds, e.g. gulls, shorebirds, raptors, and sparrows. Ideally, these should be works that provide a significant amount of information not in standard guides, but also do not provide so much information that it becomes difficult to find the truly useful stuff.
Some that I am already aware of are:
-- Advanced Birding by Kenn Kaufman. This is in the Peterson Field Guides series and was written in 1990. I think it is a neat and useful little volume that discusses 35 groups of North American birds that provide various types of identification challenges. The only problem for me is that it seems somewhat oriented towards Western birds.
-- Pete Dunne's Essential Field Guide Companion. This book provides a lengthy textual description for each North American bird (the idea is to use it in conjunction with the pictures in a standard field guide). I was just given this, and it looks quite useful, especially in terms of providing a lot of behavioral and habitat details for individual species.
-- Birding by Ear. A CD-ROM in the Peterson Field Guides series. I have only just started this, and perhaps it is not necessarily advanced, but it does use non-standard techniques for helping you to increase your recognition skills for bird songs.
I would be interested in hearing others' recommendations. I noticed the Peterson Field Guide series also has some books dedicated to particular groups of birds, such as raptors and gulls. I wonder how useful these are and whether others have found them worth purchasing.
Jim
I thought it would be useful to collect in one thread recommendations for the best books, CDs, or any other type of media that people have found especially useful for increasing their identification skills for North American birds beyond what is provided in standard guides, such as The Sibley Guide to the Birds, the National Geographic Field Guide to Birds of North America, etc. (I looked for other threads addressing this topic, but found none in the forum archives). I think there are two main categories: Works that address advanced identification skills for North American birds in general, and those that specialize in particular groups of hard to identify birds, e.g. gulls, shorebirds, raptors, and sparrows. Ideally, these should be works that provide a significant amount of information not in standard guides, but also do not provide so much information that it becomes difficult to find the truly useful stuff.
Some that I am already aware of are:
-- Advanced Birding by Kenn Kaufman. This is in the Peterson Field Guides series and was written in 1990. I think it is a neat and useful little volume that discusses 35 groups of North American birds that provide various types of identification challenges. The only problem for me is that it seems somewhat oriented towards Western birds.
-- Pete Dunne's Essential Field Guide Companion. This book provides a lengthy textual description for each North American bird (the idea is to use it in conjunction with the pictures in a standard field guide). I was just given this, and it looks quite useful, especially in terms of providing a lot of behavioral and habitat details for individual species.
-- Birding by Ear. A CD-ROM in the Peterson Field Guides series. I have only just started this, and perhaps it is not necessarily advanced, but it does use non-standard techniques for helping you to increase your recognition skills for bird songs.
I would be interested in hearing others' recommendations. I noticed the Peterson Field Guide series also has some books dedicated to particular groups of birds, such as raptors and gulls. I wonder how useful these are and whether others have found them worth purchasing.
Jim
My initial assesment is that it's not quite as good as the Olson and Larsson Princeton guide, but due to the reasons you mentioned it is definitely recommended.
