10 Bird Books You Must Own

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National Geographic Society Field Guide to the Birds of North America
Jon L. Dunn, Eirik A. Blom, George E. Watson, John P. O'Neill
$17.56
464 pages - Softcover

This is the best Field Guide for Birds of North America. Buy it if you do not own it already! New 3rd Edition was published in April, 1999.

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A Field Guide to Western Birds
Roger Tory Peterson
$14.36
432 pages - Paperback

The Peterson identification method uses arrows to highlight the key field marks. This book is highly recommended for new birders and should probably be the first field guide in your library if you live in the West. Later, you will probably find yourself using the National Geographic field guide as your primary guide and this as a backup.

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Birdfinder : A Birder's Guide to Planning North American Trips
Jerry A. Cooper
$15.37
374 pages - Spiral Bound

I love this book!! This book is based on the premise that birders can successfully plan to find a vast number of species of birds in North America, as long as they are armed with information about where to go, when to go, and what to expect. Birdfinder outlines nineteen key trips designed to produce a list of over 650 species in North America. Jerry Cooper makes this possible both economically and efficiently. Cooper summarizes the Key, Possible, Probable, and Remotely Possible birds to be seen on each of the nineteen trips, with details on transportation, accommodations, special equipment, and the birdfinding guides you will need. The specialties and key species for each of these trips are outlined in detail. This is a planning guide, illustrating a strategy for successful North American birdfinding. If you have unlimited time, you can follow the whole itinerary, trip after trip, in chronological order, Most birders, however, will pick and choose among the nineteen trips to suit the times they are free to travel. In either case, your birding experiences and lifelist will benefit greatly. Each of the nineteen trips in Birdfinder has at least one map to highlight the birding route. Another important feature of this guide is a special chart summarizing all the species to be seen on these major trips.
As a bonus, an additional "Baker's Dozen" locations are included in a special chapter. These thirteen birding locales include The Klamath Basin, The Platte River, Point Pelee, North-Central Michigan, St. Louis, Churchill, Northwestern Wyoming, Grand Manan and Machias Seal Island, North-Central Utah, The Delaware Bayshore, Cape May, Hawk Mountain, and Coastal Massachusetts.

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Ornithology
Frank B. Gill
$62.95
736 pages - Hardcover

This is the best book on ornithology. It is used as the main textbook for most college ornithology courses. Parts of this book would be extremely helpful for middle and high school science teachers.

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The Audubon Society Encyclopedia of North American Birds
John K. Terres
$44.99
1109 pages - Hardcover

A milestone in bird literature, this book belongs in every birder’s library. This monumental work is the first truly comprehensive one-volume encyclopedia to provide -- for both layman and expert -- rich, concise, authoritative, and brilliantly illustrated information on the birds of North America-all the birds that nest or have been sighted in the 48 contiguous United States, as well as Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Bermuda, and Baja California, as recorded by the American Ornithologists' Union. It is the first distillation in a single alphabetically arranged volume of the important scientific literature on North American birds. It is an encyclopedia that can be not only consulted with confidence but read with delight.

The Audubon Society Encyclopedia of North American Birds contains nearly one million words, nearly 6,000 alphabetical entries and cross-references specially arranged to make information easy to find. Its contents include the life histories of 847 birds, their appearances, habitats, ranges, songs, nests, behavior, and much more ... 625 major topics, from Courtship, Flight, and Migration to Songs and Singing, Territory, and Young and Their Care... definitions of ornithological terms ... biographies of naturalists and explorers whose names are associated with North American birds ... and an extensive bibliography spanning 300 years of ornithological publications. Among the 1,675 informative illustrations, there are more than 875 full-color photographs showing almost every bird that nests in North America and many of the visitors-photographs chosen for their excellence and for their revelation of the appearances, the habitats, and aspects of the behavior of each. There are also more than 800 black-and-white illustrations, composite drawings of family characteristics, full portraits of many species, silhouettes, anatomical details, body systems, diagrams, flight patterns, migration maps, and portraits of extinct species and fossil birds. Together, text and pictures answer almost every conceivable question about birds of North America.

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A Parrot Without a Name : The Search for the Last Unknown Birds on Earth
Don Stap
$12.76
239 pages - Paperback

This is a great book! It tells the true story of John O'Neill and Ted Parker at work in the South American tropics and the discovery of a new bird. It is a fascinating insight into the work done by ornithologists. Ted Parker was considered by most birders and scientists to be the best in the world at what he did. He could identify thousands of birds by sound alone! After reading this, you will understand the profound loss the birding community suffered when Ted Parker was killed in a plane crash in Ecuador.

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Birds of Europe : With North Africa and the Middle East
Lars Jonsson
$23.96
559 pages - Paperback

This guide covers all but a few of the Western Palearctic's breeding birds, and includes information on all regularly encountered vagrants. It has over 400 color plates and, with distribution maps and illustrations on facing pages, it is practically designed and easy to use. The drawings by Lars Jonsson are exceptional!! This field guide was the winner in every category of British Birds' survey of field guides: The best field guide for beginners, the best field guide for use in Britain, the best field guide for use when traveling in Europe. If you are headed over to Europe, you MUST have this field guide. Even if you do not have any plans to go there today, buy this guide just to see what can be achieved when everything comes together perfectly.

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Field Guide to Advanced Birding : Birding Challenges and How to Approach Them
Kenn Kaufmann
$14.40
299 pages - Paperback

Don't let the title scare you. This is the field guide that begins where the other guides leave off - that tells exactly how to solve the most challenging bird identification problems of North America. Although it is called a guide to advanced birding, it is so clearly written and beautifully illustrated that even a beginner can use it. It covers the thirty-five most difficult groups of birds, from winter loons to confusing fall warblers, jaegers to chickadees, accipiters to flycatchers. It explains concisely and precisely what the problems are in each group; then it systematically shows just how to solve them - how to tell one species from another, one plumage from another, an adult bird from a juvenile, a three-year-old gull from a two-year-old gull. This book is highly recommended for all but the beginning birder.

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The Birder's Handbook : A Field Guide to the Natural History of North American Birds
Paul Ehrlich, David Dobkin, Darryl Wheye
$14.40
785 pages - Paperback

This handbook contains treatments of the natural history of all species known to breed regularly north of Mexico. It includes descriptions of nests, clutch size, egg color, chick development, courtship, diet, and much more. There are also 249 superb essays on various aspects of birds and bird behavior. The essays also cover the key ornithologists of the past 300 years and the derivation of bird names. [This book is included free, in electronic format, in Thayer's Birds of North America CD-ROM -- See the next listing].

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Birds of North America CD-ROM version 2.5
Thayer Birding Software (it is faster to order directly from them at 800-865-2473)
$70.00
For Windows 95, Windows 98 or NT

OK, so this isn't really a book. But it is the best example of the new technology that combines photos, songs, videos, side-by-side comparisons and much more. This is the future for learning to identify birds by sight and sound! This CD-ROM includes over 3,100 color photos that you can zoom up to 400% of the original size. There are 121 video clips of birds showing typical behavior. The 696 songs from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology are of exceptional quality -- and really set this CD-ROM apart from other very good CD-ROMs by Peterson and Audubon. In addition, you can actually see pictures of the bird's songs - called sonograms. The program even lets you see a picture of your own voice! The best part of the CD-ROM is the 250 quizzes. You set the difficulty level at "Easy", "Not So Easy" or "Hurt Me Plenty." Quizzes can be taken as multiple choice, fill-in-the-blanks or as flash cards. The entire contents of The Birder's Handbook is included in this CD-ROM in electronic format. There is also an Avian Jukebox and an entire section on birding Hot Spots, reviews of binoculars and scopes, bird clubs you can join, links to birding web sites and more. The CD-ROM covers every bird ever seen in the US (excluding Hawaii) or Canada. Version 2.5 even lets you make your own quizzes and screen savers! The nice part is that there are free updates at the Thayer Birding Software web site as new birds are seen or old birds are "split." You can really tell a birder developed this CD-ROM!