Birding Field Guides

Back in the 1970's the most commonly used books to identify birds were the Peterson guides. We had a good friend give us a set of all of them-birds, mammals, insects, etc. Because I was not as well versed as to what to look for in finding some of the species, I sometimes found it hard to find the bird I was looking for.

Peterson Field Guide to the Birds of Eastern and Central Americal

A Field Guide to Western Birds: A Completely New Guide to Field Marks of All Species Found in North America West of the 100th Meridian and West of Mexico


A Field Guide to the Birds of Texas: and Adjacent States

And the Peterson guides are still commonly used.


But as Henry and I travelled around the United States both before and after children, I found that the Audubon Society field guides were easier for us to use. They had good photos of each bird and the birds were arranged by how they appeared rather than by species groups. So in addition to grouping the hawks together, the ducks together, the perching birds etc; all the "red" perching birds were together, the black birds were together, and the brown females were together. This made it easier to find the more common birds and make the identifications.

National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds: Eastern Region

National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds: Western Region

During our visits to National Parks we ran across the National Geographic Field Guide. Since I find it useful to have several books (because sometimes the bird you're looking for isn't in the book), we added it to the collection. It was nice because unlike the Audubon Society guides, all the information and the photos about the bird were all together on the page. So many times the final identification is dependent on where you and the bird are, so having both the photos of similar species and their geographical ranges on the same page helped us figure out which bird we were watching.

National Geographic Field Guide to Birds of North America

As I run across different guides, I'll pick them up because sometimes the bird is photographed at different angles. I have Kaufman Guide to Birds of North America, Stokes Field Guide to Birds: Eastern Region,
and The Birds of Texas, by John L. Tveten.

At the Rio Grand Festival I picked up two other guides - the first one because I was intrigued by one of the seminars on a different way to identify shorebirds - by shape and size rather than by the feather patterns:

The Shorebird Guide by Richard Corssley, Kevin Karlson, and Michael O'brien.


The second one I picked up because I was having so much trouble distinguishing between hawks. I thought this one would HAVE to help. William Clark was also one of the speakers at the RGV Birding Festival.

A Field Guide to Hawks of North America by William Clark and Brian K Wheeler

But I kept hearing people talk about the Sibley guides. They seemed to be very popular with the more expert birders. So while at the Bosque, I picked up the big Sibley Guide to Birds. One of the things that I realized was tripping me up with both Hawk identification and some of the shorebird identification is that some species have several very different looks. Some of the shorebirds have four different plumages depending upon what season of the year it is. Some of the hawks look differently every year for the first four or five years. And then you have morphing, such as the dark morp of the red tailed hawk or the blue morph of the snow goose. The Sibley guide are excellent drawings that show each of the ways these species may appear.

The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America

The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America
The Sibley Guide to Birds

While I suspect I will still be using my older guides for certain birding situations, these Sibley guides may be what I need now to bump my birding skills to the next level.

Now if only my memory will hold out.