Rating: 
Summary: A Terrific Field Guide
Review: Being an avid birder, this is by far the best book to take into the field. Its new design makes it extremely quick to find the bird simply by looking at its basic shape and behavior. My favorite part is how it organizes its warblers into Eastern, Western, wingbars, no wing bars, etc. Although it doesn't have as many versions of species as the National Geographic guide, it is much more field worthy being smaller and easier. Being an advanced birder, when I say easier, I do not therefore limit it to the beginner. Every birder must admit he or she has problems with certain birds. This field guide is superb at every kind of bird (particularly difficult ones like gulls, warblers, etc.). The illustrations are the most beautiful and accurate I have ever seen. The section at the beginning with computer generated images of extinct birds is very interesting (and helpful, too if you happen to find a remnant flock of Bachman's warblers). It is much more up to date and has better illustrations than Peterson (not to mention that this has maps on the same page). It beats Audubon by having illustrations instead of photographs, more plumages of species, and the descriptions and maps on the same page as the bird. It surpasses Golden with it's better illustrations and easier to understand format. It does, however, lack some important plumage variations in certain birds (i.e. the ruff). But next to everything else it is the most superb guide I have ever used.
Rating: 
Summary: A very good field guide.
Review: I have been a birdwatcher for many years and have several field guides on bird identification. Some of them, I never take out in the field, though. The main reason is that I don't feel confident enough with the drawings in them. I don't feel that way about this field guide, however. I got All the Birds of North America three years ago. It's one of my favorite bird identification guides. I have enough confidence in it to actually use it when I go birdwatching. The drawings of the birds are very good. They are also in full color and feature habitat backgrounds. The guide is weather-resistant and in a pocket-size format, too. The range maps are on the same page as the drawings and text descriptions of the birds. The text descriptions of the birds are very helpful and clear. The birds are organized by field-recognizable, instantly-observable characteristics. All the Birds of North America is one of my favorite field guides. It has really helped me. I recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: most informative and easy to use
Review: I really appreciated the drawings: precise, nice. The birds are drawn in their environment, that original and nice.
But the birds are not classified as in most of the other birds guide. That's disturbing at first when you are used to another one. The index (the birds' list at the end of the book) is not so easy to read. The texts and explainations are good.
Rating:
Summary: Lots of Info, maybe iffy in the field
Review: Since my old copy of Golden's "Birds of North America" was the unfortunate victim of a flood (many of the pages got hopelessly stuck together), I decided to buy a new bird book. It came down to this book or the revised Golden Guide. What made me decide on this book is that it can easily fit in your pocket, it has a waterproof cover, and it has much more information about the various types of birds, including information about whether or not various species are declining and/or threatened or endangered. But I think the point that others have made, that the Golden Guide has more and slightly better illustrations, is well taken. Good overall guide, but probably not the best for the harder-to-identify species.
Rating:
Summary: Almost all the birds
Review: The standard guide for birds by Roger Tory Peterson is being challenged by this comprehensive collection from the American Bird Conservancy. The differences are evident as soon as you turn to the first page. There is a chart "How to Identify Birds," turned sideways, with a list of bird outlines divided into type (where they're seens, the shape of their bills), each accompanied by a number of possible bird types. Each line yields a page number. Continue holding the book sideways, you flip to the proper page number (which are printed sideways as well, indicating the thought put into organizing the information), where -- turn the book proper, please! -- you find a selection of bird illustrations to match with your sighting. Subtle signals dot the pages to guide you on your quest. Musical notes indicate if the bird sings, and gives a general idea of how; names are color-coded according to how scarce they are. But it is in organization and presentation of information that this book shines, and you realize with a start that all birding books should look like this. It really is an imaginative breaththrough.
Rating:
Summary: Nice for beginners
Review: This book is a very useable field guide for beginning birders. The book is organized to help you identify birds as quickly as possible. First, you decide whether you are looking at a water bird or a land bird; the first part of the book covers water birds, and the second part land birds. If you're looking at a land bird, you next decide whether you've got a large bird or a small one. The section on large birds has small silhouettes of the birds' shapes in the margin, while the section on small birds shows the birds' beaks. By flipping through these small drawings in the margins, you can easily narrow down the bird you are looking at to a few pages. Then you look at the numerous color illustrations, the range maps, the short descriptions, and the song patterns to help you determine the identity of your bird. For further information, each chapter starts with a short article that describes the morphology and behavior of the group of birds that are covered in the chapter. Scientific names are included for each bird, and rare or endangered birds are highlighted. As a rank beginner bird watcher, I found the book extremely easy to use and informative. The color illustrations, because they are idealizations, were much more accurate and easier to use than the color photographs that appear in some other field guides. The descriptions of each bird are rather short, leaving me hungry for more details, but this book is a great place to start.
Rating:
Summary: Nice for beginners
Review: This book is a very useable field guide for beginning birders. The book is organized to help you identify birds as quickly as possible. First, you decide whether you are looking at a water bird or a land bird; the first part of the book covers water birds, and the second part land birds. If you're looking at a land bird, you next decide whether you've got a large bird or a small one. The section on large birds has small silhouettes of the birds' shapes in the margin, while the section on small birds shows the birds' beaks. By flipping through these small drawings in the margins, you can easily narrow down the bird you are looking at to a few pages. Then you look at the numerous color illustrations, the range maps, the short descriptions, and the song patterns to help you determine the identity of your bird. For further information, each chapter starts with a short article that describes the morphology and behavior of the group of birds that are covered in the chapter. Scientific names are included for each bird, and rare or endangered birds are highlighted. As a rank beginner bird watcher, I found the book extremely easy to use and informative. The color illustrations, because they are idealizations, were much more accurate and easier to use than the color photographs that appear in some other field guides. The descriptions of each bird are rather short, leaving me hungry for more details, but this book is a great place to start.
Rating:
Summary: Birding Field Guide for Beginning and Intermediate Birders
Review: This field guide finally solves the most serious problem for birders...what is the species I am watching? The very clear and efficient guide in the inside front and back covers is designed to help find that LBJ (little brown jobbie) in double quick time. The plates contain clear drawings, including variant forms, of related species, shown in habitat context, with range maps, general descriptions, specific species description with field marks, sizes and distribution. Colored indices on the page edges are just one of the many aids to locating that unknown species. This is a must for your first birding field guide. I recommend it in my Beginning Bird Identification course without hesitation.
Rating:
Summary: most informative and easy to use
Review: This is the best bird guide I have ever used. It helps my family to identify birds by key features. My sons now look at birds and tell me their beak shape, what they most likely eat, the color of the legs and their relative size, all from regularly using this book. It gives pictorial examples of birds one might confuse with one another. Also useful are the estimates of particular bird population in each geographic area, with terms such as "abundant," "populous," "numerous," and "numerous but declining." I appreciate the brief, not preachy, explanations given for why certain populations of birds are declining.
Rating:
Summary: Depth and clarity
Review: With so many birding field guides available these days, birders suffer from a veritable embarrassment of riches when it comes to selecting which volume(s) to take into the field. Even in the face of still competition, this still fairly new guide put together by the American Bird Conservancy has many strong points to recommend it. First, the illustrations are, for the most part, gorgeously painted and well-printed. Second, there is adequate emphasis on key identification field marks. Third, the book is small enough to be easily carried in a jacket pocket or field guide pouch. And fourth, although no single field guide can really be said to include "all the birds," this one comes close enough, and even features some special sections and illustration plates showing "accidentals" that occasionally show up in North America. If there is a key problem for potential users of this guide, it is that its authors have daringly attempted to create a new way to organize the presentation of the many hundreds of species included. Rather than follow the taxonomic approach typical of other field guides, the authors have organized in part in accordance with habitat and geographical area. For novice birders unfamiliar with the way it's "usually done," this may prove quite convenient. For experienced birders, however, this distinctive organization will likely prove the source of headaches rather than added convenience. The other problem with this and indeed, any field guide that is more than a year or so old is that ornithologists are constantly lumping and splitting species. With its 1997 publication date, the book is recent enough to have included some important "splits," including the California/Black-tailed gnatcatchers and the California/Canyon towhees. However, there are more recent changes that have occurred since 1997, including the newly recognized Gunnison sage grouse and the splitting off of Arizona from Strickland's woodpecker. Hopefully, the publishers of *All The Birds* will employ a periodic updating regimen to keep its readers current with regard to what is or is not considered a "real species." Ultimately, the field guide that most avid birders will continue to carry with them in the field always is the *National Geographic Field Guide To The Birds of North America*. As a second and perhaps more portable reference, however, *All The Birds of North America* might be a good book to bring on one's field trips, as well.
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