Product Description
This is a pack of five guides to more than 100 of the RSPB's nature reserves. Divided into four separate sections, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, each section has a map to enable the user to quickly locate the reserves and major roads. ... Read more

Product Description
How-to's of home birdwatching and attracting birds. Plus behavior guide and bird survival facts. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

bring nature into your yard
This lovely DK (Dorling Kindersley) has the trademark vivid photographs on every page. Detailed information on discouraging squirrels, plans for making your own feeders of different types and lists of various birds you can attract using various methods.

Each bird page has a detailed photo of the bird, a map of the United States showing where and when you can see the bird, behavior and description of sounds and songs, nesting habits, and the best kind of food to attract and benefit the birds you want.

Information on bird baths and nesting boxes is also provided.

A great resource for those who love to have God's creatures in their yard, but don't know the best way to attract them.

Made Me Coo With Joy...
...to receive this fine book! Trying to identify the birds visiting my backyard feeder with old field guide books was not working. They simply had too much information geared for experts. This book is nicely laid out and clear, offering tips for attracting, feeding, watering and identifying the birds visiting your backyard, as well as instructions for building bird houses, feeders, and so on. I put several of the ideas to use immediately! If you are an amateur backyard birder, this is the book for you!!

Beautiful Photos, Great Info
I am a beginner backyard bird watcher and I really enjoyed this book. It has some great pictures to help you identify birds, or even just to look at. The book doesn't stop there, however, it gives you nice detailed information of bird behavior, sounds, nests and habitat. I recommend this book to beginner or intermediate bird watchers.

Well Worth Having
This book is a really nice reference book for the backyard birdfeeder.It's not just a bird identifier book, it has chapters on bird survival and behavior.I'm glad to have it my small bird library and refer to it often.

a good supplement to any backyard birder's library
This revised edtion will make an excellent gift for the beginning or intermediate backyard birder. Photographic plates thoughout serve as good visual aids. Photos are exquisite in detail despite the size of some color plates. This book also contains plans for feeders of various types. Overall, a good addition for any birding enthusiast. ... Read more

Product Description
Introduced in 1977 and completely revised in 1994, these bestselling photographic field guides have become the birding bibles of more than four million enthusiasts. Virtually every bird found in North America is brought to life in a full-color photograph and with textual information on the bird's voice, nesting habits, habitat, range, and interesting behaviors. Accompanying range maps; overhead flight silhouettes; sections on bird-watching, accidental species, andendangered birds make these the most comprehensive field guides to birds available.

Note: the Western Edition covers the Rocky Mountain range and all the states to the west of it, while the Eastern Edition generally covers states east of the Rocky Mountains. Amazon.com Review
A favorite of birdwatchers (especially those who preferphotographs to illustrations), this field guide, revised for 2000,accounts for the 544 bird species that live in the region west of theGreat Plains. The clearly printed color photographs capture birds atrest and in flight; preceded by black-and-white silhouettes, theplates are organized by visually based, intuitivecategories--"hawk-like birds," "pigeon-like birds," and "perchingbirds," for example--that make on-the-fly identification a fairlysimple matter. The images are matched by clearly written text thatdescribes a given bird, gives an approximation of its voice, anddetails its habitat, range, nests, and behavior. Sized to fit in ajacket or backpack pocket, this is a valuable companion for anybirding outing in the region. --Gregory McNamee ... Read more

Customer Reviews (23)

Birding...
I have always favored NAS guides and this book is another reason why I value them so highly.It is easy to use, comprehensive in its scope and small.I would recommend this to anyone who has any interest in birds, novice or expert.

Great purchase!
I recently purchased National Audobon's Field Guide for Birds - Western Region and couldn't be more pleased with it. The book was in "like new" condition and was delivered in a very short time.Thanks Amazon!

great field guide
I love these books. I have found with field guides that it is always good to have more than one because they all lack information, but this is definitely a good one to have. Very small and lightweight.

National Audubon Society Field Guide To Birds--Western Region
I have been bird watching for over 25 years. I am far from a professional ornithologist, but I do keep yearly lists of birds I have seen.I lived on the pacific flyway for a few years and enjoyed the diversity of birds I saw daily with my family.I still struggle with the flycatchers and as Patrick F. McManus called them in his story "Tough Guys Don't Bird" (Real Ponies Don't Go Oink!), "the little drab birds."This is due to my lack of familiarity with them.Keep this in mind as you read the rest of my review!

For ease of use it would be a "5 Star" product.Birds are categorized by type (gull-like birds, perching birds, etc.) with an easy to identify symbol.Some categories of birds (like the perching birds)are further divided into color phases that help to find the bird by color.Photos are in color and are linked (by page #) to a geographic map of the species range (with a written description of their range), written physical description of the species, common name and genus/species is also provided, identification by call (somewhat useful--I'd by audio examples if you are interested in ID by voice-- it is more helpful), habitat, and nesting.Additional helps are found in the introduction, Parts of a Bird (black and white plate with each part of the bird identified), How to Use This Guide section, and an Index of all birds with corresponding page numbers.IT IS A GREAT RESOURCE THAT I HIGHLY RECOMMEND TO ANYONE INTERESTED IN IDENTIFYING BIRDS OF THE WESTERN US.(My older kids <9-12 yrs old> can navigate the book and find the birds they have seen)

The only complaint I have is some of the photos (maybe 1-2%) aren't as helpful as they could be (remember the LITTLE DRAB BIRDS). Color isn't as vibrant in the photo, specific characteristics are hard to see, and you only get one angle of view of the bird.I use a Sibley Field Guide To Birds of Western NA to help ID birds I am struggling with.It provides numerous color plates (painted) of each species with additional angles of view (flying and standing) that help to see the bird from other positions.Because they are painted the attention to detail is AWESOME and really helps with the harder to identify birds.It is a great resource in its own right!I would recommend buying both resources!

GReat Gift
This was purchased as a Christmas gift for my daughter, so it's hard to review.Service was great and the book arrived as promised. ... Read more

Product Description
A comprehensive, single-volume encyclopedia provides both novice and expert birders with concise, authoritative, and lavishly illustrated information on the birds of North America, presented in a detailed, thoroughly cross-referenced format. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Really big book
This large, heavy book has extensive information about birds.It is not really a guide to look up the ones we see.Reading it from cover to cover will provide a very comprehensive education about birds: habits, physiology, variation, etc.

Excellent Material - handle with care
I have had this book since the 1980 edition. It is a very comprehensive work with beautiful pictures. You need to know which family a bird is in to look it up. In other words to read about an American Robin you look under thrushes. In the descriptions of each bird, it goes into depth describing characteristics, feeding habits, nest, eggs, incubation, other names, albinism and range. It defines all terms related to birds. All are alphabetically listed. I have rated it a 4 instead of a 5 because of my edition's binding. The glue does not hold up well and sections of the book have separated from the binding. This happened quite soon after I bought my first copy and I had it replaced. The same happened to the replacement. I still recommend book this as it's material is so worth while. Just handle it with care. ... Read more

Product Description
This book explains the Latin names of all birds of the Indian Subcontinent. The Introductory section on science and philosophy of bird nomenclature describes several aspects like toponyms, eponyms, descriptive and other epithets, as well as the role of International Commission for Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN). Information about all taxon-authors of birds of the Indian Subcontinent is provided in a separate section. The book also provides information on the conservation and endemic status and distribution of all birds. With four separate indexes of common names, generic names, specific names of birds, and of taxon-authors, this volume includes 18 lithographs by John Gould, Elizabeth Gould, and Henry Richter, 15 specially commissioned portraits of Taxon-authors, 309 bird sketches, and 8 black and white photographs of prominent ornithological personalities. ... Read more

Product Description
This milestone publication presents the first thorough and detailed review of the conservation status of European birds. Based on detailed breeding and wintering population data collected in each country, the report provides a review of the population sizes and trends of Species of European Conservation Concern. The major threats to each species are discussed, with the basic measures that are needed to conserve them and their habitats. "...should be compulsory reading for Europe's environment ministers. It certainly will be an essential reference book for anyone with a serious interest in European bird conservation." - David Tomlinson, "New Scientist". It is a winner of Birdwatch Book of the Year 1995. The panel of judges noted that the book is: '..an ornithological bible for every bookshelf'. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great field guide!
We like this field guide due to the initial step of id by silhouette. Just find the shape that seems right and you will be well on your way to an accurate id. Once you have the shape, you can go to the family pics of 584 real birds, not paintings as in Peterson guides, for color, size, gender, then to the detailed descriptions for colors of plummage, legs, beak and so forth, voice, habitat, nesting, and range. That initial shape guide, bysolid black silhouettes puts us in the right ball park time after time. I just bought a second copy so we can keep one at the cabin. This is my husband's go to guide book. Highly recommend. ... Read more

Product Description
"John M. 'Frosty' Anderson was one of the National Audubon Society's great 'living legends.' . . . No one has done more for wildlife than this modest man with the best sense of humor ever to come down the pike."--from the ForewordNational Audubon Society sanctuaries across the United States preserve the unique combinations of plants, climates, soils, and water that endangered birds and other animals require to survive. Their success stories include the recovery of the common and snowy egrets, wood storks, Everglade kites, puffins, and sandhill cranes, to name only a few. In this book, Frosty Anderson describes the development of fifteen NAS sanctuaries from Maine to California and from the Texas coast to North Dakota. Drawn from the newsletter Places to Hide and Seek, which he edited during his tenure as Director/Vice President of the Wildlife Sanctuary Department of the NAS, these profiles offer a personal, often humorous look at the daily and longer-term activities involved in protecting bird habitats. Collectively, they record an era in conservation history in which ordinary people, without benefit of Ph.D.'s, became stewards of the habitats in which they had lived all their lives. It's a story worth preserving, and it's entertainingly told here by the man who knows it best. ... Read more

Product Description

For over 25 years, primatologists have speculated that intelligence, at least in monkeys and apes, evolved as an adaptation to the complicated social milieu of hard-won friendships and bitterly contested rivalries. Yet the Balkanization of animal research has prevented us from studying the same problem in other large-brained, long-lived animals, such as hyenas and elephants, bats and sperm whales. Social complexity turns out to be widespread indeed. For example, in many animal societies one individual's innovation, such as tool use or a hunting technique, may spread within the group, thus creating a distinct culture. As this collection of studies on a wide range of species shows, animals develop a great variety of traditions, which in turn affect fitness and survival.

The editors argue that future research into complex animal societies and intelligence will change the perception of animals as gene machines, programmed to act in particular ways and perhaps elevate them to a status much closer to our own. At a time when humans are perceived more biologically than ever before, and animals as more cultural, are we about to witness the dawn of a truly unified social science, one with a distinctly cross-specific perspective?

Customer Reviews (2)

Good entrance point into the literature
This is a collection of scientific articles on animal cognition and its relationship to social structure.It covers a wide range of species, from wolves, to dolphins, to chimpanzees to elephants.To me, it plugs an important hole between more general books on the theory of evolutionary psychology and actual field research.I found it particularly interesting, because most books on this subject stick to the primates.To broaden the scope to include other high-intelligence mammals, such as dolphins and elephants, was valuable.It makes it possible to start thinking about animal cognition and social structure, in a genuinely cross-species context.

This is not a book for the beginner or the casual reader.These are actual, technical scientific papers.The book is aimed at those who want the real science, in a handier format than digging out the articles from scientific journals.

O.K., but not what I expected
I was very excited to read this book, it looked like an excellent compilation of interesting research from a wide range of fields.However, I was dissappointed by the contents.Most chapters are just reviews of the general research of the authors, and some hardly address the idea of intelligence and culture.Some authors spend the whole chapter just reviewing their research, and then in the last paragraph run over their thoughts on if there is intelligence or culture in their study species in just a few sentences.Having said that, some chapters are golden and well worth the read.Because this book is relatively cheap for a science book, I would say that the few insightful chapters make it worth the cost, but overall it was not as informative or interesting as I had hoped. ... Read more