David Allen Sibley

I was very disappointed by this book. I think my expectations were way off.

I did not at all learn what it's like to be a bird. I read interviews with the author where he talked about how he has become convinced in the course of writing this book that birds have very sophisticated minds and make complex decisions. The interviews imparted a sense of wonder that made me think this book was going to delve deep into the minds of birds and help the reader understand bird behavior and cognition. show more That's not at all what this book is.

Instead, it's a lovely coffee table book full of beautiful illustrations and trivia. The information in the book is fascinating, but it is presented as a literal bullet-list of facts about birds. The organization of the book is very strange: the introduction is a list of what facts are discussed in the book, arranged by topic. Then, the main part of the book is arranged by bird species. Each species gets a few pages of bulleted text. Sometimes the information under each species is specific to that bird, and sometimes it isn't, which makes it really frustrating to try to learn either about a specific bird or about a specific topic. Then the last section of the book is again a list of species, with a paragraph of information about each species.

The illustrations are beautiful. The facts are interesting, but basically random. This would be a lovely book to flip through to look at the pictures, or to pick up and read a few pages at a time, but it's very frustrating if your goal is to actually learn something coherent about birds. show less

This is the second edition of this book (I gave the first to my mom) and is a fabulous resource for anyone even casually interested in their backyard birds. Now my backyard includes a river, this book has been a great help to ID migratory birds I've never seen before (like the greater scaup) and birds I didn't see in NH (like the broad wing hawks that I see almost daily flying over the yard). Most bird groups get a spread that shows all the species in that section so it's easy to pick your show more suspects. Each bird then gets a page detailing its different phases, flight positions, range, song/voice and sometimes even babies and fledglings. Plus the artwork is phenomenal. show less

Although I did indeed read this straight through from start to finish (a few pages a night before bedtime), this isn't really a book meant for that. The introduction drives that home by acting as a sort of annotated index, grouping information into categories like "feathers," "bird senses," "food and foraging," etc. If any of the bulleted tidbits of info intrigue you, you can follow the page number they provide to one of the bird portfolios that make up the bulk of this book and read a show more little more detail.

As for the bird portfolios, water birds are covered first, then land birds. Each bird portfolio includes a roughly life-size painting of an example species or two (so, for instance, the painting of a Brown Pelican is only able to feature most of its head, whereas the Killdeer painting features the whole bird), in addition to illustrations of everything from a Bald Eagle's line of sight to the structure of hummingbird tongues and more.

The paintings and illustrations are fabulous and make this book a joy to flip through. The "essays" are short bulleted paragraphs that expand upon information mentioned briefly in the introduction and use specific kinds of birds as examples. There's only enough time and space to just barely scratch the surface, but it all still made for fascinating reading.

I didn't exactly come away from this understanding what it's like to be a bird, and in some ways they ended up feeling even more alien to me. That wasn't unexpected, however, and I still had fun trying to wrap my brain around different bird senses, behaviors, and ways of living.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

I have to say this right off the bat, because I think it is funny and potentially points to my birding ignorance. At the end of this Sibley guide there is a "Species Checklist" which makes a lot of sense until you consider the size and weight of the book. Surely Elphrick, Dunning and Sibley don't want you carrying this behemoth into the field!
What you need to know about this guide is that it is unique in its voice. In addition to its glossary there is a section on author biographies because show more each chapter is an essay written by a variety of folks. Not just ornithologists and other types of bird experts contributed an essay or two. Students, biologists, naturalists, ecologists, writers, museum curators, photographers, and even a B&B owner.
Additionally, the illustrations and maps are stunning. show less