"This new bird guide is a great book to bring along on any easy to medium difficulty backpacking trip. It's weight makes it unreasonable for ultralight backpacking or difficult trips, but it's a wonderful resource for any outdoor expedition where you can manage to haul a couple extra pounds.
The book features clear, good quality photos of the birds of North America. Similar looking species are organized together with multiple images for easy comparison. The setback of using photos rather than drawings is that not every photo shows the bird in a perfect stance, so occasionally a few field marks are missed, but the more common birds all have multiple pictures showing different sexes and age variations, so they work very well overall for quick and accurate identification. I've also found the photos to depict the plumage coloration more accurately than the drawings found in other books.
Range maps are included for each bird, conveniently located next to the bird descriptions and photos. There are also helpful tips about geographical plumage and habitat variations, bird dimensions and weight, and vocalization descriptions.
Additionally, there is a useful reference dvd in the back of the book which has almost 600 mp3s of the call notes and song samples of 138 North American bird species. For traveling into the wilderness, copy the files from the dvd onto your portable mp3 player so you can compare songs of birds you encounter as you hike.
The pages of the book are color coded on the top margins, grouping the birds by order, which makes finding birds very quick. Each order has a brief overview explaining how the particular group of birds differs from others.
This is a great book for novice and experienced birders alike."
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