Steve N. G. Howell

A beautiful book. Excellently photos and illustrations. Great tips on bird field marks as well as differentiating one species from another. Each bird gets a whole page of pictures and info; large pages of approximately 11"x6".
Helpfully organized by (most common) habitat: Urban Areas, Woodlands, Grasslands, Wetlands, Seashores, and Deserts.
The Family Groups section could use an overhaul (more easy to read layout, more photographs), but other than that, it's an excellent addition for your home birding library.… (more)

This is a good guide written by four experts in the birding world. My favorite part of the book is called Understanding Birds and covers topics like birds both real and imaginary, the origins of birds, life cycles, etc. The last half of the book is an identification guide and the photography is beautiful. This part of the guide is organized by type of habitat: deserts, urban areas, grasslands, etc.

Too big to be a field guide but full of useful information, especially to anyone new to the hobby of birding, this guide is enjoyable arm chair reading.… (more)

When hiking or on a nature walk, seeing and hearing birds is a gift that I always look forward to.

Seeing or hearing a rare bird is an amazing treat. For this book 'rare' is defined as "...species for which, on average, only 5 or fewer individuals have been found annually in North America since around 1950...".

Species accounts are organized logically, give detailed comments and specifics for field identification. The artistry is very well done and shows different angles and identifying features.

I was most interested in the songbirds and of course most of the birds featured were no where near me; however, it was interesting to read about the Redwing which might make an appearance in a habitat near me.

Overall, it was very interesting to read about and see these rare birds, some of which there is only one account of in North America!… (more)