An easy-to-carry volume with detailed range maps to help identify birds in the field and at home. The range maps are of the whole continent, showing breeding, year-round, and winter range plus migration routes. I don’t leave home without my Sibley’s!
If you are comfortable using your Peterson’s Guide and want more detail, try this book. I am very glad I started out using a Peterson’s, but now that I can usually identify a bird to family just by looking at it, Sibley is my favorite reference because of the added views (there is a picture of the bird in flight for every species).
The book is arranged by family instead of by color/type the way Peterson’s is. It has handy sidebars on topics like redpoll subspecies, how woodpeckers climb, and identifying cormorants. Why say, “That’s a cormorant,” when you could say, “That’s a double-crested cormorant!”
The beginning of each family’s section has a comparison of all the members of the family. This book is your best companion in the wild world of flycatcher, sparrow, and warbler identification.
Review by Alexia Stevens, bird language instructor
Kamana Two Required Resource