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| Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America | 
 enlarge | List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $14.38
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (based on 52 reviews)
Sales Rank: 8483
Category: Book
Author: Ted Floyd
Publisher: Collins
Studio: Collins
Manufacturer: Collins
Label: Collins
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: Pap/DVD
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 528
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.2
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.4 x 1.4
ISBN: 0061120405
Dewey Decimal Number: 598.097
EAN: 9780061120404
ASIN: 0061120405
Publication Date: June 1, 2008
Release Date: May 27, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
This new field guide provides a suite of modern tools to effectively aid in the identification of more than 750 species of birds across North America. It introduces a "whole bird" approach by concisely gathering a collection of information about birds into one portable and well-organized volume. - 2,000 stunning color photographs of birds in natural habitats show the most important field marks, regional population differences, life stages, and behaviors
- 700-plus detailed and up-to-date color range maps show summer, migration, winter, year-round, and rare but regular occurrences of every major species
- A DVD of birdsongs for 138 major species (587 vocalizations in all for 5 hours of play); each high-quality MP3 file is embedded with an image of the bird, perfect to view on home computers and portable MP3 players
- Concise descriptions of habits and ecology, age-related and seasonal differences, regional forms, vocalization, and informative captions pointing out the most important aspects of the bird
- 46 group essays with information outlining taxonomy, feeding, migration, habitats, behaviors, and conservation status
- A thorough and accessible introduction to birds and birding includes sections on parts of a bird, plumage and molt, food and feeding, migration, habitats, conservation, tips on bow to become a better birder, and more
- A detailed glossary of terms, species checklist, and quick index
The new Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America is perfectly designed to give birders the most powerful and user-friendly collection of information to carry into the field or wherever they enjoy learning about birds and nature. A Look (and Listen) Inside the Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America
Click on an image below to sample one of the 587 different downloadable bird songs included with the guide.  |  |  | | American Wigeon | Common Loon | Mallard |  |  |  | | Red-Winged Blackbird | Mourning Dove | Northern Cardinal |
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| Customer Reviews: Read 47 more reviews...
 Informative and thorough. September 26, 2008
This is an excellent field guide: well researched and written. The photos are beautiful and the descriptions are clear. A perfect layman's guide.
Outstanding, but not alone September 18, 2008
The Smithsonian Field Guide to Birds of North America is an outstanding contribution to a crowded field. Unlike the Peterson and National Geographic Guides (among others), this guide uses high quality photographs taken of the birds in a characteristic environment. Detailed, well colored maps indicate the yearly range of the bird specifying breeding, migration, winter, year round, and rare ranges. Photographic quality is uniformly excellent. But the biggest advantage of this book is that it comes with a comprehensive CD of bird calls beautifully recorded. This is a feature that the other guides lack and is a very strong recommendation for this volume, for, as any birder knows, we hear many more birds than we see.
 Excellent guide September 18, 2008
I'm going to start with the summary first, for those in a hurry: this is a wonderful guide, chock full of full, high-color photographs and a fantastic CD with bird calls on it that can be downloaded to an MP3 player. With the possible exception of the fact I had some issues actually correlating the birds in real life before me with their counterparts in the book, I really like having this book as reference.
Birds are categorized according to their species and further information is provided with each bird such as their locations in the north American area (which, to be specific, comprises of the lower 48 states, Alaska and Canada, but not really Mexico and parts further south) and their winter ranges and otherwise.
Each entry is succinct and easy-to-follow. All variations, if they exist, in plumage are described. The different sexes and juveniles are also described, but all without being overwhelming. The only issue I had with using the guide was using it to find birds in my backyard, the names of which I didn't know. I wish there were a better way of quickly finding a bird in the book, perhaps by grouping them by color? I don't know, I suppose knowing which birds are which is a skill is picked up with practice.
Four stars.
A great field-guide September 15, 2008
I am not a experienced bird watcher. My husband and I moved into our house 5 years ago and we have a bunch of butterfly bushes and tree's and I am always seeing birds around our yard. One even nested in the butterfly bush just outside my kitchen window. This guide has wonderful photographs, loads of birds all categorized by type.
My only issue with this guide is, as I am very inexperienced I really haven't figured out all the different types of birds, so I wish there was a way to have an index of small photographs categorized by color, so I could very quickly find a bird while I was watching it. I think the more I look at the book the more I'll learn to recognize what type of bird I am looking at and be able to look it up more quickly.
The ultimate handy bird reference August 28, 2008
This is a very impressive and easily navigable guide for bird novices and a nice handy recourse for the bird expert. It comes with a dvd that has 587 birdsong samples in high quality, along with a picture to go along with each sample. The book is set up with a nice introduction establishes how the book is laid out and what information one can expect to find in the text. The text itself is organized by bird families and each entry shows where one would expect to find the birds in question most often. The pictures to go with the descriptions are all very nice and clear, and should enable one to have a good shot at picking out the different species on sight. Lots of information, lots of great pictures and a host of extras (including the birdsongs) here. The book is light in weight for having so much information, and the cover and binding are made especially to be durable and portable. It's a great guide.
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