Birds Of New York Field Guide

Rating:
Summary: Easy to Identify Birds
Review: Being from upstate New York, it is great having a sharp, clear, upclose picture of the birds native to this area without having to filter out the birds of other regions. The descriptions are easy to understand and makes for enjoyable reading. As an amateur bird watcher, I highly recommend this publication which has now become my #1 birding book.

Rating:
Summary: as a beginner, this is great!
Review: Great little book for somebody like me, who just started trying to figure out what those birds are at my feeders. It's just enough info for me to take in and make me want more. So far, with great pleasure, I've found everything I've seen in western New York in this book. And I love the oddball facts.

Rating:
Summary: good for beginners
Review: When I saw this book I thought it was really great. It has a few features I love but also a few things I hate.
The good things: It's very easy color coding method to look up birds. I think this is a great method for spotting birds quickly. If you see a black bird, you go to the black tabbed area and look at all birds that are black, very easy.
I also like the fact that it documents a state, New York, instead of a region.
Well, thats it for the good points unfortunetly. So the bad?
The book only lists 120 birds out of over 450 that have been sited in New York! Thats a big gap of missing birds! It's not even half the birds. I feel the book should have documented at least 240 of them. But at least the 120 birds listed are the most commonly seen I guess. Some photos in the book are off. I think some of the birds are mounted and not live birds. The book lists only One bird as being a mounted bird due to it's elusiveness. But if you look at the photo of the common pigeon (rock dove) you can clearly see the photo shows a purple colored pigeon? I have never in all my life in New York seen a purple pigeon?!?!?!
Other photos don't seem that far off, but still, if one photo is like that, how many more are?
The book fails to record the birds wing spans, which is odd. But the info provided is pretty good.
The Audobon feild guide to eastern birds is a far better purchase. You get 508 different birds opposed to the 120 in this book. But my personal taste is for the Stokes field guide: eastern region. It's better then the audobon giude in my opinion, easier to find birds quickly and with information on each bird where it should be.
So, my final words: This books layout is great! It's the best type of layout for identifing birds in the field. The drawback is it's poor photo depictions make it hard to identify birds by it's color (very ironic?) and the number of birds listed for the high price is too expensive. I would recommend this book to beginners who watch birds in your own yard and neibourhood, but it is clearly not for anyone who goes out looking to identify birds. If anything, its a good coffee table book.

Rating:
Summary: good for beginners
Review: When I saw this book I thought it was really great. It has a few features I love but also a few things I hate. The good things are it's very easy color coding method to look up birds. I think this is a great method for spotting birds quickly. If you see a black bird, you go to the black tabbed area and look at all birds that are black, very easy. I also like the fact that it documents a state, New York, instead of a region. Thats it for the good points unfortunetly. So the bad? well, here it goes. The book only lists 120 birds out of over 450 that have been sited in New York! Thats a big gap of missing birds! It's not even half the birds. I feel the book should have documented at least 240 of them. But at least the 120 birds that are in the book are the most commonly seen, Which is good enough i guess. Some photos in the book are off. I think some of the birds are mounted and not live birds. The book lists only One bird as being a mounted bird due to it's elusiveness. But if you look at the photo of the common pigeon (rock dove) you can clearly see the photo shows a purple colored pigeon? I have never in all my life in New York seen a purple pigeon?!?!?! The book also lists the pigeon in the gray color section, hmmm? heh heh, ok so that was a small pun. Other photos don't seem that far off, but still, if one photo is like that more are there? The book fails to record the birds wing spans, which is strange to me. But the info provided is pretty good. The Audobon feild guide to eastern birds is a far better purchase. You get 508 different birds opposed to the 120 in this book. But my personal taste is for the Stokes field guide, eastern region. It's better then the audobon giude in my opinion, easier to find birds quickly and with information on each bird where it should be. So, my final words: This books layout is great! It's the best type of layout for identifing birds in the field. The drawback is it's poor photo depictions make it hard to identify birds by it's color (very ironic?) and the number of birds listed for the high price is too expensive. I would recommend this book to beginners who watch birds in your own yard and neibourhood, but it is clearly not for anyone who goes out looking to identify birds. If anything, its a good coffee table book.