Recommended Books

Highly Recommended

There are many excellent books available that can give you excellence in your bird explorations.

We really like the National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds. This book is nicely organized for quick identification and also for relaxing study. Its highly acclaimed content includes great pictures right along bird details.

This fully revised edition of the best-selling North American bird field guide is the most up-to-date guide on the market. Perfect for beginning to advanced birders, it is the only book organized to match the latest American Ornithological Society taxonomy.

National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America, 7th Edition

The National Geographic’s Complete Birds of North America, third edition, 2021, edited by Jonathan Alderfer and Jon L. Dunn

This 752-page hardcover text (c2021) is the expanded desk reference that coincides with the range maps and illustrations presented in National Geographic’s softbound and much smaller Field Guide to the Birds of America, seventh edition (@2018), 591 pages. This companion reference includes an introduction of the 95 avian families present (or recorded in the past) in North America, north of Mexico, excluding Hawaii. The descriptions of each 1,040 species covered is expanded from the field guide and includes behavior, identification, similar species, voice, status and distribution, and population notes. The range maps are larger than those in the field guide, and maps indicating the approximate ranges of subspecies are conveniently included along with the main text descriptions for each species (instead of in an appendix in the field guide). The Complete Birds of North America offers a lifetime of learning to inquisitive birders seeking detailed information and an in-depth understanding of North American birds.

Smithsonian Handbooks: Birds of North America: Western Region (Smithsonian Handbooks)

Published in association with America’s preeminent authority, the Smithsonian Institution, this comprehensive handbook to the birds of North America: Eastern Region includes 706 species — all birds known to breed east of the 100th meridian on the United States and Canada, as well as regular visitors and vagrants to this region. The Smithsonian Handbook is the first identification guide that includes details of the bird’s life history in a concise and user-friendly format.

Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America, Second Edition (Peterson Field Guides)

For decades, this has been a popular and trusted guide for birders of all levels, thanks to its famous system of identification and unparalleled illustrations. The Peterson Field Guide now includes the wonderful and exotic species of Hawaii. In addition, the text and range maps have been updated, and much of the art has been touched up to reflect current knowledge.

The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession

Every January 1, a quirky crowd storms out across North America for a spectacularly competitive event called a Big Year—a grand, expensive, and occasionally vicious 365-day marathon of birdwatching. For three men in particular, 1998 would become a grueling battle for a new North American birding record. Bouncing from coast to coast on frenetic pilgrimages for once-in-a-lifetime rarities, they brave broiling deserts, bug-infested swamps, and some of the lumpiest motel mattresses known to man. This unprecedented year of beat-the-clock adventures ultimately leads one man to a record so gigantic that it is unlikely ever to be bested. Here, prizewinning journalist Mark Obmascik creates a dazzling, fun narrative of the 275,000-mile odyssey of these three obsessives as they fight to win the greatest— or maybe worst—birding contest of all time.

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