- Paperback: 383 pages
- Publisher: Thomas Allen; illustrated edition edition (Oct 1 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0395964644
- ISBN-13: 978-0395964644
- Product Dimensions: 19 x 11.7 x 2.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 454 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#279,963 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #90 in Books > Outdoors & Nature > Birdwatching > Field Guides
- #91 in Books > Science > Biological Sciences > Animals > Birds & Birdwatching > Field Guides
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
World-renowned birder Kenn Kaufman addresses a long-running paradox of bird field guides with his Focus Guide. While beginning birdwatchers prefer photographic guides like those by Donald Stokes, the physical traits that make identification easier are more readily discerned in the idealized paintings of illustrative guides like those by Roger Tory Peterson and National Geographic. Kaufman's groundbreaking work combines the best of both approaches by digitally enhancing photographic images to show the characteristics that are sometimes not apparent in photographs.
Some other distinguishing features include:
- The guide is organized by bird family groupings rather than strict taxonomic classification; this is a feature that will appeal especially to beginners.
- Text descriptions and range maps for each species appear on the page facing the plate of respective bird images.
- Important field marks are highlighted.
- Color-coded tabs identify each grouping of birds (waders, warblers, sparrows, etc.) for quick thumb indexing.
From Publishers Weekly
Every spring, tens of thousands of bird-watchers migrate across the country in search of vireos, towhees, and violet-crowned hummingbirds; these birders can be recognized by their binoculars, their respect for nature and their frequent stillness and near-silence. By next spring, many of them will be toting this guide. Author and illustrator Kaufman (Lives of North American Birds) has long been one of the birdwatching community's stars. His colorful, practical and very portable book aims to become the new standard in the field. The book is small enough for a big jacket pocket, and can be held in one hand; color-coded tags divide its 16 sections on 16 classes of birds ("Ducks, Geese, Swans," "Chicken-Like Birds," "Medium-Sized Land Birds," "Flycatchers," etc.). Each left-hand page describes three to six related birds, with range maps for each, color-coded for season and frequency; brief phrases give most species' song, voice or call-note. The corresponding right-hand page offers bright, high-resolution color pictures of the same birds, on a perch or in flight. Short inserts help explain, for example, how to distinguish among many similar sparrows. Kaufman's guide is revolutionary in that it's the first to use digitally altered photographs (more than 2,000 of them) rather than unretouched photos or paintings - in practice the computerized images look like extremely detailed paintings. Though he pays more attention to common birds, Kaufman is happy to cover rare visitors and migrants: here are a brace of robins, but also bluethroat (restricted to northwest Alaska, and "hard to see when not singing"), and 16 kinds of (introduced) parrots. The guide may not be the most comprehensive available, and its laconic descriptions deliberately avoid facts that won't assist identification. But Kaufman makes up for those limits with compactness, great design and ease of use - especially for beginners: an appendix leads new birders to further resources (some of them online). Major ad/promo; 22-city author tour. (Sept. 22)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America,
By
This review is from: Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America (Turtleback)
As newbies to birding we find this field guide a useful complement to a few other guides we have that are region specific. The artwork is good and the guide size is easily transportable. The descriptions of the bird species is great and very thorough.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best Bird ID Book I've Ever Owned,
By
This review is from: Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America (Turtleback)
We have a shelf full of bird guides in our house, but this is the book we grab first, and 99% of the time, the only one that is needed. Also one of the few out there with good pictures of BOTH sexes. Would we rather they had photos instead of drawings? Probably. But it's a small price to pay for the best identification book we've ever had.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Very nice, for a photo guide,
By
This review is from: Birds of North America (Paperback)
Let me tell you my bias up-front - I generally prefer bird guides which contain illustrations rather than photographs; I have found that poor lighting, bad angles and subjects not representative of their species tend to make their way into photo guides, thereby defeating the purpose. That said, I am very impressed with the quality of images in the Kaufman guide, likely because they're not unretouched. Kaufman uses digital editing to touch up the photographs so that each one is more representative of each species, and so that the quality of lighting is excellent.It is of a size small enough to be easily carried into the field, unlike my favorite book, the Sibley guide, and the different page background colors are convenient for flipping quickly to the right section. There are short sections in the front of the book on "how to bird," "where to bird," and "what to look for," along with a few other blurbs, but all of this covers only nine pages total. Further, the text accompanying each bird is very short, one small paragraph. Still, it's readily apparent that a *lot* of work went into this guide, and I'm really impressed with it. While I personally believe that it's not something a novice birder would likely find really useful, like the National Geographic Society's book, intermediate and advanced birders will likely find it easy to use for quick reference about a field marking or species differentiation. Conveniently, he covers all of the birds of North America, thereby obviating the need to purchase one book for the East, one for the West, and so forth. My best advice is to get your hands on a copy of this book before purchasing it if you're not certain you'll like it - birding guides can be a highly-personal thing, and you may find that this review is just totally buggered! I'm still glad I own this book, and occasionally take it out into the field instead of my preferred NGS, just for the sake of variety.
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