Mary B. Dickinson

My favorite birding guide book. It has great pictures and descriptions. The blurbs with the range maps is fantastic and it has a lot of incidental species to South Texas (at least) that a lot of guide books lack since they are not "common enough", I guess.

There's a handy checklist in the back if you want to check off species as you see them, but since I'm a much more casual birder, I just write in the white space next to the bird where and when I saw it for the first time.

This is an excellent reference book, invaluable for both the novice and expert birder. The brief but informative introduction is well written and well illustrated. The thumb tabs for the major bird families help speed access to the desired species. The individual descriptions of species include an overview, range maps and data, voice characteristics, and clear, colorful illustrations. My only gripe is that the book is a bit too big and cumbersome, for me at least, to comfortably use out in show more the field. show less

Can't live without this one--it goes everywhere with me. I've since updated and bought the 4th and 5th editions, but all of my birding notes are still in this very worn copy. An excellent field guide, in my opinion. I supplement it with [b:The Sibley Guide to Birds|15832|The Sibley Guide to Birds|David Allen Sibley|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166694299s/15832.jpg|17649], which stays at home while I drag the Ntl. Geographic guide with me.

nonfiction/bird guide illustrated with color paintings and helpful range maps

found this old 4th ed (2002) in the used pile and picked it up to help with my casual (very amateur) birding. As mentioned in other reviews, the names and taxonomies of various species are updated annually so some of this info will be out of date, but then again climate change probably makes even the newest editions out of date. Supplementing with eBird resources (online and app) as well as Cornell's Merlin app (for show more identifying songs and calls by sound, since most birds are hard to actually spot) helps a lot.

My edition doesn't have thumb tabs, but there is a handy "Quick-find" index at the back of the book to point to relevant pages. show less