Rating: 
Summary: Sibley does it again !
Review: After switching my National Geographic for the more massive "Sibley guide to birds", I'm now adopting this new book as my main field guide. The format is great, the illustrations just as good as the original "Guide to birds", the maps are excellent (and updated) and this time, the descriptive text is more generous and really helps in the field.One little thing that I would have appreciated is getting birds dimensions in centimeters as well as in inches. Birds weight is already in ounces and grams. I'm hoping that one day, we'll get the whole North American version in one book and in that format. Louison
Rating:
Summary: Sibley does it again !
Review: After switching my National Geographic for the more massive "Sibley guide to birds", I'm now adopting this new book as my main birding field guide. The format is great, the illustrations just as good as the original "Guide to birds", the maps are excellent (and updated) and this time, the descriptive text is more generous and really helps in the field. One little thing that I would have appreciated is getting birds dimensions in centimeters as well as in inches. Birds weight are already in ounces and grams. I'm hoping that one day, we'll get the whole North American version in one book and in that format. Louison
Rating:
Summary: Take It From a Beginner With Zero Experience
Review: I have read all the other reviews on this page and my stance has not changed. I received this book for Christmas from my parents who got my hints that I like to look at nature a little more closely than most other people. By no means am I a great bird-watcher, but I'm definitely working on improving!
While this guide to Western N.America may not be the honkin' encyclopedia other people want to sift through, this book makes for a great excursion guide, a quick way to look birds up. I am, at the moment, in possession of three other bird books, including the Audubon guide. Some have actual photographs, others have different charts. I can't say how often I actually refer to Sibley's in the end. It's just a more "natural" book to flip though.
Sibley gives you the basics, here, not extraneous info that weigh down your backpack. I like to keep track of what I see, and then do further research relaxed at home with a drink.
The first 17 pages is the usual fare of introductions to birding, color recognition, song recognition and learning, maps, and season keys. The next 7 pages includes a "Bird Topography." I don't know if this is birding lingo or creative writing, but I reference these pages often. Sibley's fantastic drawings are given black & white, sketch, and enhanced colorized treatments with breakdowns of body and wing parts for several different birds. Again, as a beginner, these are essential to me.
Thereafter are all the birds in the Western N.A. as detailed by Sibley's hands. Living by the ocean, I have access to a huge variety of birds that I never enjoyed when living in the Rockies.
I wouldn't state that the beginner should begin with only this one book. I found that I learned more about bird recognition by looking at several books. Every author has something original to say. But if there is one book to own, it would be Sibley's.
Nycticorax!
Rating:
Summary: An excellent followup to the Sibley Guide to Birds
Review: My main problem with the original Sibley Guide to Birds has been its size. While it is an excellent and comprehensive reference, it is just too bulky to carry in the field. Sibley found the answer in coming out with separate guides for East and West. The new western guide, a wonderful addition to the Sibley family, contains updated nomenclature and range maps. Also, it contains only western birds and those eastern birds that have have shown up in the west as accidentals. It leaves out the eastern birds that have never been seen in the west before, thus saving time when using the book to ID a bird in the field. The biggest advantage is the smaller size which actually makes it feasible to carry in the field without nearly as much difficulty. Although there is a loss of detail compared to the original Sibley guide, this is a small price to pay for the portability of the smaller size. For the serious birder I would recommend getting both this book (for the field) and the originaly Sibley Guide to Birds (for a reference), but otherwise this book (or its eastern counterpart depending on where you live) is definitely the way to go for a comprehensive, portable field guide.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent followup to the Sibley Guide to Birds
Review: My main problem with the original Sibley Guide to Birds has been its size. While it is an excellent and comprehensive reference, it is just too bulky to carry in the field. Sibley found the answer in coming out with separate guides for East and West. The new western guide, a wonderful addition to the Sibley family, contains updated nomenclature and range maps. Also, it contains only western birds and those eastern birds that have have shown up in the west as accidentals. It leaves out the eastern birds that have never been seen in the west before, thus saving time when using the book to ID a bird in the field. The biggest advantage is the smaller size which actually makes it feasible to carry in the field without nearly as much difficulty. Although there is a loss of detail compared to the original Sibley guide, this is a small price to pay for the portability of the smaller size. For the serious birder I would recommend getting both this book (for the field) and the originaly Sibley Guide to Birds (for a reference), but otherwise this book (or its eastern counterpart depending on where you live) is definitely the way to go for a comprehensive, portable field guide.
Rating: 
Summary: A disappointing compromise
Review: Of the making of many books there is no end, and so here we have another volume from David Sibley, author of the (large) Sibley Guide, hands-down the best field guide available to North American birds. Even that book has its disadvantages, though, and Sibley (or rather, one is forced to suspect, his publishers) has sought to remedy two of them--namely, its physical weight and misleading range maps--by dividing it into two considerably more portable volumes. Unfortunately, while the book now fits into generously proportioned pockets, and while the maps are tremendously improved (residents of BC, AB, and Nunavut may disagree...), the new layout made necessary by the smaller format essentially vitiates the original guide's great advantages. Gone are the startlingly large-scale images, replaced by what are for most species literally thumbnail-sized illustrations (well, I've got biggish thumbs); for most species, the images now float in the gutters and margins next to the text. The captions to these images still provide a tremendous amount of information, in a few cases even more information or more clearly stated than in the "big" Sibley. But the cramped layout means that it is impossible to compare some similar species without flipping pages; Western and Cassin's Kingbirds, for example, are on different openings. The great strength of the original guide was the vertical orientation of the species accounts, and now that that is gone, the book barely holds its own against the more traditionally designed and meatier NatGeo. I suspect that birders sophisticated enough to use this volume efficiently will not need it; and those who need it will find it frustratingly cluttered.
Rating: 
Summary: Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western NA
Review: Overall a very good book. Species maps are on the same pages as the species accounts so there is no extra flipping to find the map. However, I have noticed that many colors in this guide are very muted. I work at several bird-banding stations and have held live birds up to the color pictures and notice quite a difference. Sibley's colors are not nearly as vibrant as the reall thing, giving an inaccurate impression of some of the colors.
Rating:
Summary: Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western NA
Review: Overall a very good book. Species maps are on the same pages as the species accounts so there is no extra flipping to find the map. However, I have noticed that many colors in this guide are very muted. I work at several bird-banding stations and have held live birds up to the color pictures and notice quite a difference. Sibley's colors are not nearly as vibrant as the reall thing, giving an inaccurate impression of some of the colors.
Rating:
Summary: Finally a pocket sized Sibley
Review: Sibley has done a great job of putting pictures, text and maps together in this guide. Regrettably, though, all that info. on 1/2 a page (2 species per page) makes it difficult to see/read; especially with older eyes. In addition, I still think Peterson's paintings are the best in presenting the birds in a manner closest to how they look in the field. Sibley's paintings are a bit stark compared to the real thing. On a recent trip to Madera Canyon, I noted this when looking, in particular, at a Lazuli Bunting, and a Rufous-Winged Sparrow. Sibley's new guide is very good, but I still keep "Roger" in the fanny pack, and Sibley back in the car as reference. Good birding.
Rating:
Summary: Exceptional
Review: The larger Sibley field guide caused quite a stir but it was also a bit of a bear, in terms of size. The smaller guides that focus on east and west, are much easier to carry. Everything about them is, really, as good as it gets: the paintings, the maps, the descriptions - a top quality product.
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