Customer Reviews

National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America, Fifth Edition

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I chose the National Geographic field guide to the Birds of North America (4th edition) over everything else that I could find when I first arrived here to travel nearly five years ago. Since then I've purchased many other leaders in bird field guides, including Sibley, Peterson, Stokes, photographic guides, behaviour guides. [Each adds something to identification and species accounts]

The National Geographic guides are still my choice to pack around out there in the Great Outdoors. [I now have the National Geographic Western Birds edition for "local" outings and my garden.]

The National Geographic guide has full-colour, accurate and detailed artist renderings of the birds, mostly with some element of their likely habitiat. There are no arrows or other prompts on the illustrations, except discreet text stating the species common and scientific names, whether the individual is male/female, adult/juvenile etc. There are useful two-page spreads of general families in flight, revealing other field marks how you are likely to see them and aiding size comparisons.

It is easy for me to use as my first visual reference, with almost all illustrations for identifying the birds on the right page, and indicative range maps and descriptive information in text on the left. The cover-flaps' quick indexes to families and species are a great idea, doubling as reliable book-marks when you've got to take another look at the bird.

I upgraded to the 5th edition the day it was released. Errors I'd noticed in the previous edition were corrected, some taxonomic changes were included and bird families re-ordered according to emrging scientifc knowledge, and the quick find thumb-tabs introduced.

Assuming that an attentive eye and mind can process the wealth of identification information in this field guide without getting overwhelmed, I recently gave a copy to an absolutely new birder (along with a simpler guide to help narrow down families), who took to it like a duck to water.

The tabs make flipping through quick and easy, and as well, the illustrations, maps and descriptions make it easy to identify species. I would recommend this field guide to both beginner and experienced alike.