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Eric G. Bolen and Dan Flores, The Mississippi Kite: Portrait of a Southern Hawk "The Mississippi Kite ranges throughout the southern United States from the coasts of the Carolinas to the plains of the Southwest. Bolen and Flores describe all aspects of the kite's life cycle, from breeding and nesting, raising young, and hunting and feeding to the kite's annual return to its winter range deep in South America."
Published by University of Texas Press, 1993. 115 pages, about 6 x 9¼ inches, hardcover. New, remainder.
Item #212. Shipping weight: 1.3 lbs. Cover price: $17.95. Your price: $4.00
Troy E. Corman and Cathryn Wise-Gervais (editors), Arizona Breeding Bird AtlasHefty new volume is an encyclopedia of information on Arizona's nesting birds. "This atlas provides a breeding distribution snapshot for each of Arizona's nesting bird species at the end of the twentieth century. . . . Each of the 270 two-page species accounts contains a color photo of the species and a range map summarizing the breeding distribution records collected during the atlas survey period. The accompanying descriptive text and graphs provide nesting habitat information and a timeline chronicling each bird's breeding phenology and migratory status in Arizona. Additional chapters describe Atlas methods, results, and Arizona ornithological history, as well as topography, climate, and habitat diversity, which ultimately govern bird species distribution in the state. Useful to land managers and biologists, the atlas will also be a resource for birders and educators and will increase public awareness of Arizona's vast avian life."
Published by University of New Mexico Press, 2005. 636 pages, about 9 x 11 inches, hardcover (no dust jacket).
New.
Item #890. Publisher's price: $45.00. Your price: $40.50 (out of stock)
Mary Taylor Gray, Watchable Birds of the Rocky Mountains Photographs by Weldon Lee. A photographic guide to the more noticeable and "fun to watch" birds you may see in the Rockies. It is particular good in giving information on each species that an all-inclusive field guide wouldn't have room to include, and is designed for people who would like to know more about birds, but are not really avid birders. The photographs are of excellent quality and a treat for bird lovers of any ability.
Published by Mountain Press Publishing, 1992. 155 pages, about 5½ x 8½ inches, paperback. New, remainder.
Item #342. Shipping weight: 0.9 lb. Cover price: $14.00. Your price: $5.00
Bernd Heinrich, Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds "This is an amazing book by an amazing author. Heinrich is a scientist and naturalist of the first rank, champion ultramarathoner, woodsman of skills seldom seen in modern times, and not least, as Mind of the Raven illustrates, a nature writer of uncommon talent. By living with the ravens over many years, literally at home and in the field, he has documented a level of intelligence and social sophistication rarely even dreamed to exist in birds."—Edward O. Wilson.
Harper Collins, 1999. 380 pages, about 5 x 8 inches, paperback. New.
Item #225. Shipping weight: 1.2 lbs. Publisher's price: $14.95. Your price: $13.50
Peter Matthiessen, The Birds of Heaven: Travels with CranesPaintings and Drawings by Robert Bateman
“In legends, cranes often figure as sentinels of heaven and omens of longevity and good fortune. And in nature, they are an ‘umbrella species’—one whose well-being assures that of the ecosystem at large. The Birds of Heaven chronicles Peter Matthiessen’s many journeys on five continents in search of the fifteen species of cranes. His telling captures the dilemmas of a planet in ecological crisis, and the deep loss to humankind if these beautiful and imposing creatures are allowed to disappear.”
Includes 19 pages in color of Robert Bateman’s elegant paintings, plus several of his drawings interspersed with the text.
Published by North Point Press, 2003 (first published 2001). 347 pages, illus., about 5½ x 8 inches. Paperback. New.
Item #844. Shipping weight: 1.5 lbs. Publisher’s price: $16.00. Your price: $14.40
National Geographic, Field Guide to the Birds of North America, Fourth EditionA book which many birders consider the best field guide to the birds of the United States and Canada. Enables you to identify 800 species, including some rare or accidental migrants, featuring full-color diagnostic paintings and range maps. The text describes field marks, adult (distinguishing male and female when these differ) and juvenile plumages, calls and songs, and the range in winter, summer, and year-round for non-migratory species. The index doubles as a checklist.
Published by the National Geographic Society, 2002. 480 pages, about 5 x 8 inches, paperback. New.
Item #201. Shipping weight: 1.8 lbs. Publisher's price: $21.95. Your price: $19.75 (Out of stock)
Roger Tory Peterson, Field Guide to Western Birds, Third EditionA Completely New Guide to Field Marks of All Species Found in North America West of the 100th Meridian and North of Mexico
The last edition of the classic work by the late Roger Peterson, the ornithologist and naturalist whose first field guides set the standard for decades to follow. This is still the favorite guide of many birders in the west, for you are not distracted by the inclusion of eastern birds, and Peterson's paintings have more vivid and crisp colors than Sibley's comparable work. Text in this edition is on the page facing the illustration (unlike the first two editions). Range maps by Virginia Marie Peterson (showing summer, winter, and year-round ranges) are included at the back of the book.
Each species entry includes common name, scientific name, description including field marks, description of the voice, range, and habitat. Description of the family each bird belongs to gives common traits of the members of that family including food items. The illustrations, which are full-color paintings showing the species in characteristic poses (without the limitations of poor lighting and individually idiosyncratic moments captured by photographs), use the famous "Peterson system" of arrows pointing to key field marks. A checklist precedes the index in the back of the book.
Published by Houghton Mifflin, 1990. 432 pages, about 4¾ x 7½ inches, flexible hardcover. New.
Item #35. Shipping weight: 1.7 lbs. Publisher's price: $19.95. Your price: $18.00
Roger Tory Peterson, Peterson First Guide to Birds of North America A simplified field guide to the common birds of North America, featuring 188 species, each illustrated with Peterson's outstanding full-color paintings.
Houghton Mifflin, 1986. 128 pages, 4 x 7 inch paperback. New, remainder.
Item #210. Shipping weight: 0.4 lb. Cover price: $4.95. Your price: $2.00 (SOLD)
David Allen Sibley, National Audubon Society: The Sibley Guide to BirdsThis new field guide builds on the best of older books such as the National Geographic and Peterson guides, and adds many innovative new features. What strikes me at first look is that each species is illustrated with more paintings than you find in other guides. For example, the Merlin entry shows the color variations of three different populations (Pacific, Taiga, and Prairie); each population is illustrated with six paintings: One of the juvenile viewed in flight from below, a second of the juvenile viewed obliquely from above, two more views of the adult in flight from the same angles as the depictions of the juvenile; a fifth of the adult perched leaning forward, and the last with the adult perched but hunched up!
The new features published in this book include field marks not mentioned in other guides and revisions of known marks, almost all species are shown in flight (not often seen in illustrations of the passerines---perching birds), thorough coverage of subspecies and geographic variations, and range maps which not only show summer, winter, year-round, and/or migrational ranges, but also areas of rare occurrence.
The biggest drawback of the book is that it is larger and heavier than any other field guide commonly in use by birders. It measures about 6½ x 9½ inches by 1¼ inches thick, and weighs about 2½ pounds! But given the wealth of information in contains, many birders will want to buy a special shoulder bag for carrying it.
Published by Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. 544 pages, hardback with flexible cover. New.
Item #300. Shipping weight: 3.0 lbs. Publisher's price: $35.00. Your price: $31.50 (out of stock)
David Allen Sibley, The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North AmericaExcellent new field guide by the creator (writer and illustrator) of The Sibley Guide to Birds. Unlike the latter, more comprehensive work, this new book is in a portable field guide format, and covers only the western US and Canada, using the Rocky Mountains as the eastern boundary of coverage.
It has all the marks of a first rate bird field guide: excellent color paintings which show the birds in several characteristic poses in optimum lighting (something not readily achievable with photographs), with examples of juveniles and each sex when plumage is different; pictures, range map and information on the same or facing page for each species; detailed information on field marks, voice, habitat, and relative abundance; range maps with color-coding for winter, summer, year-round, and migration ranges throughout North America (not just the western half, and including northern Mexico) plus a shade for where it occurs on rare occasions; and special charts for comparing similar species.
Perhaps the main advantage this guide has over others (such as the National Geographic) are its illustrations of birds in flight on both the upbeat and downbeat. Other guides usually do not illustrate most of the passerines (perching birds—the majority of small to medium-sized birds) in flight at all. The stiffened cover—intermediate between standard hardbacks and paperbacks, affords more protection to the book than given by a paperback cover, without the extra weight of a hardcover.
Published by Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. 471 pages, illus., about 5 x 7½ inches, flexible hardcover (or rigid paperback would be another way to describe it). New.
Item #845. Shippig weight: 1.6 lbs. Publisher’s price: $19.95. Your price: $18.00
Donald & Lillian Stokes, Stokes Field Guide to Birds, Western RegionMost birders agree that the best field guides for birds use paintings rather than photos. The problem with even the best photos for field use is that each shows a particular individual bird under variable lighting conditions from a particular viewpoint. An outstanding bird artist, on the other hand, can paint similar species from the same angle, with the same lighting, and choose to not show characteristics (such as a ruffled feather, or a slightly atypical coloration or pattern) that are not typical of the whole species.
That said, if you still don't like paintings of birds or you just want to have a book with great bird photos, the Stokes Guide is the best of the photographic field guides. Like the other major field guides, it is complete for the area it covers—in this case North America north of Mexico and west of the meridian which bisects Texas. It includes more than 900 color photographs and has all the identification information on a single page, usually with only one kind of bird per page. Each entry gives basic identification information, and notes on feeding, nesting, and other behavior. An added bonus is the quick guide to birds common in backyards and around feeders, and learning pages for difficult groups, such as warblers and hawks in flight.
Published by Little, Brown and Company, 1996. 519 pages, about 5 x 8¼ inches, paperback. New.
Item #301. Shipping weight: 1.8 lbs. Publisher's price: $17.95. Your price: $16.15
Marie Winn, Red-Tails in Love: A Wildlife Drama in Central Park "An amazing drama, as good as any soap opera and all the more remarkable since it is a true wildlife story."—Birding
Vintage Departures, 1999. 317 pages, about 5 x 8 inches, paperback. New.
Item #319. Shipping weight: 1.0 lb. Publisher's price: $13.00. Your price: $11.70
National Geographic, Bird Migration in the Americas posterMap of North and South America showing the migration routes of dozens of species of birds. It is supplemented by excellent paintings of the birds covered, and includes notes on each. This is a great poster for inspiring thought about where those common spring and summer backyard birds (not to mention raptors and seabirds) go in the winter—and demonstrating that conservation strategies cannot stop at national borders, for most of the birds shown are international travelers.
Scale, 1:20,000,000 (1 inch = about 315 miles). Size: about 23 x 36 inches. Rolled poster. Paper.
Published by National Geographic Maps, 1983 (2000, limited revision). New.
Item #NG-602810. Shippig weight: 1.0 lb. Publisher's price: $10.99. Your price: $10.00
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