Bird Watching Books

Bird Watching Books

Field Guide Reviews from Fatbirder

I’ve been using birding Field Guides for more than half a century and reviewing them here for more than two decades. In my lifetime they have gone from risible to magnificent, depending on where you are in the world. A number of trends have emerged some good, so not so much.

In my view the seminal moment was the publication of Collins Bird Guide in 1999. It set a new benchmark that only the very best guides have matched. Happily a number of other guides followed suit and the ones for North America and for Australia are as good. More recently Richard Crossley began publishing guides based on the idea of showing birds in typical habitat covering different ages, genders, flight modes and etc. Another publishing pinnacle. Lastly, several of these guides have become first class apps that add the benefit of calls to the guides, and allow world birders to carry on their smartphone almost a world library of guides (See Birding Apps Review page).

One other development I am not convinced by is the trend to publish photo-based guides rather than painted images. I’ve yet to see one that is as good as a drawn guide simply because photographic images are not all taken in the same light nor show birds in identical poses so that ID differences are obvious and that is the essential prerequisite for a good guide in the field.

Below are reviews of books that I believe are the very best available.