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Summary: This veteran birder's favorite field guide
Review: I started birdwatching in the mid-seventies and used as my first field guide the Golden book. It is the perfect size to go anywhere and it includes the range maps of the species on the same page as the painting of the bird. (My major complaint of the Peterson guide is the maps are at the back of the book.) The Golden was my favorite until I purchased the National Geographic 3rd edition. The NG contains more variations of each species with great detail. However, this turned out to be a double-edged sword. Too much detail to look through on an unfamiliar bird, and the book is cumbersome in the field. Checking out Ken Kaufman's new field guide from my local library and using it during the waterfowl migration this spring, convinced me it is my must have book in the field. I was never a fan of the photographic guides, but with today's technology, Kaufman and his crew hit a home run. Clear digitally- enhanced photos. It IS field guide size with range maps next to the bird's picture. The one-page, short index inside the back cover is very helpful in looking up a bird quickly. I own eight field guides including the Sibley guide, but this is the one I take in the field. If you're looking for a single book to get started in birdwatching, this is my pick. Happy birding!
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Summary: Kaufman's new guide is a bit of a let-down
Review: I was greatly anticipating the arrival of Kaufman's new field guide. I had been very impressed by his guide to advanced birding (Peterson); and was expecting this guide to be of the same kind of calibre. It isn't. In contrast to Sibley's new guide, which has beautiful illustrations but virtually no text, Kaufman's guide has very good text -- which I appreciate -- but the pictures (if they can be called that) are lousy. The reader gets very much the impression that they have been cut out of a magazine and pasted into place on the page, with a little bit of touching-up done by a computer for good measure. Overall, this is a semi-respectable field guide...the text, as noted above, is quite good, and for this, I thank Mr. Kaufman. However, the quality of the pictures was a big disappointment. I believe the best field guide to the birds of North America is still the 3rd edition of the National Geographic Guide.
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Summary: Best book for new birders
Review: I've just started to get involved with the world of birds and I have to say that this is by far the best book to learn from. Not only is it easy to use, but it is also full of interesting, helpful facts. Since I have the flexi-cover edition, I can take it anywhere! I can use it at the top of a summit or in the car. This is by far the best book for new birders out.
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Summary: I give this one to my friends
Review: I've owned and enjoyed numerous field guides through my 50+ years of life: Peterson, Golden, National Geographic Society, Audubon, Sibley and Kaufman. My homes have been Illinois, Alaska and Montana. The guide I carry in the field today is Kaufman's BIRDS OF NORTH AMERICA.His digitally altered photographs are not as lovely as the paintings in the latest NGS, Sibley or Peterson guides (which I own and admire). His written comments are enjoyable, brief and apt. Kaufman's guide works best, I believe, for quick identification in the field. That is why this is the first bird book I give to my friends. Negatives? Sure. I do not care for the colored pages (indexing okay, but not entire pages), and I think some of the owls look weird.
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Summary: Excellent, but I'm still keeping my Peterson's.
Review: Kaufmann's Focus guide is a wonderful effort and I agree with its merits as outlined admirably by previous reviewers. I have spent a couple of weekends with it, and my birding knowledge has clearly improved. However, there is one aspect of the book that I think was a mistake -- the use of colored, rather than white, pages. In different sections of the book, there are (at least) yellow pages, seafoam green pages, and sky blue pages. The problem, as any psychophysicist could tell you, is that the background colors affect one's perceptions of the bird colors. Though the sky blue background is not too bad, the odder colors are disconcerting. On those few introductory pages with normal white paper, the colors are much plainer. For me, the background colors render this guide much less pleasurable to use and I have to wonder why the book designers used these colors. So, I continue to haul my battered copy of Peterson's into the field, leaving Kaufmann and the National Geographic Guides back at home for armchair birding.
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Summary: Very nice, for a photo guide
Review: Let me tell you my bias up-front - I generally prefer bird guides which contain illustrations rather than photographs; I have found that poor lighting, bad angles and subjects not representative of their species tend to make their way into photo guides, thereby defeating the purpose. That said, I am very impressed with the quality of images in the Kaufman guide, likely because they're not unretouched. Kaufman uses digital editing to touch up the photographs so that each one is more representative of each species, and so that the quality of lighting is excellent. It is of a size small enough to be easily carried into the field, unlike my favorite book, the Sibley guide, and the different page background colors are convenient for flipping quickly to the right section. There are short sections in the front of the book on "how to bird," "where to bird," and "what to look for," along with a few other blurbs, but all of this covers only nine pages total. Further, the text accompanying each bird is very short, one small paragraph. Still, it's readily apparent that a *lot* of work went into this guide, and I'm really impressed with it. While I personally believe that it's not something a novice birder would likely find really useful, like the National Geographic Society's book, intermediate and advanced birders will likely find it easy to use for quick reference about a field marking or species differentiation. Conveniently, he covers all of the birds of North America, thereby obviating the need to purchase one book for the East, one for the West, and so forth. My best advice is to get your hands on a copy of this book before purchasing it if you're not certain you'll like it - birding guides can be a highly-personal thing, and you may find that this review is just totally buggered! I'm still glad I own this book, and occasionally take it out into the field instead of my preferred NGS, just for the sake of variety.
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Summary: Excellent Guide
Review: Of all the bird guides in our local library, this one was the best. We recently found an injured bird in our yard and were curious to discover what it was. Most of the field books helped us narrow it down to just a couple of possibilities (we thought it might be a mockingbird) but only one book gave us the determining information... the eye color. Apparently immature mockingbirds, as this was, can have darker eyes than adults, and all the other guides we consulted neglected to tell us this, and thus confused us. This guide provided much information to distinguish adults and juveniles, males and females, and similar species. I believe it even mentioned what they eat, which I found left out of most guides. According to the other reviews, the book is unconventionally arranged, but for beginners and amateurs (like me) this hardly makes a difference. Definitely one I will consider purchasing as soon as I can afford it!
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Summary: Bird Guru Kaufman helps beginners
Review: That amazing guru Kenn Kaufman has finally finished his all new birding field guide "Birds of North America" using touched up photographs and "pointers"(similar to Peterson) I think this guide will catch on and be loved by amature and beginner birders. I think the maps are very good and the many colors used really help the maps.Kenn uses two colors for the each of the seasonal ranges. A darker color indicates the area where the species is common during that season, while a paler color indicates areas where the species while present is less common or rare. The pictures for me at times can become a little crowded and some of the photos are a little pale, but most of them are much better than any other "photo guide". Some of my Photos and ink smeared in my book, so you may want to double check before purchasing your book. This field guide makes it very simple to look up a bird on the field. The Color Tabs are simple as well as the index in the back. I enjoyed the vocal I.D. for each bird but that is a very personal taste. Each I.D. also adds a little something I miss in a lot of field guides, for example: "A hyperactive midget, common in winter in woods and thickets of south. Harder in summer, when often high in tall conifers. Flicks wings open and shut especially when excited." Golden-Crowned Kinglet In closing I must say this is one of the easier field guide to birds to use and is a warm welcome to the birding community. Martin Phillips
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Summary: A very good book for intermediate and advanced birders.
Review: The "need to know" what kind of bird you are seeing, no matter where you are in the USA, is the reason to purchase this useful guide. Excellent photographs (more than 2,000) and succinct descriptions make bird identification easier. Though not the best book for beginners (I highly recommend "Stokes Beginner's Guide to Birds") "Focus Guide to the Birds of North America" is a very good book for intermediate and advanced birders. Kaufman organizes his book by placing the birds in groups according to their shape rather than color. Thus, using his methodology, identifying a bird was slower than other bird guides I have used. Nonetheless, this would be a welcome gift any birders library. Recommended.
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Summary: I thought it would be better
Review: The 'touched up' photos sounded like a great idea, but I'm a bit disappointed. Anyone who has seen a Stellar's jay, a Mountain Bluebird, and a regular Blue Jay would immediately comment on the striking differences in color! But in this book all three share a common 'muddy' hue... Ruby-throated Hummingbirds regularly visit my feeder, but the photo-illustration in the book so little resembles the real bird that I would never identify it from the picture (fortunately we only have migratory Ruby-Throateds and Rufous hummingbirds in this area, so the identification issue is not critical in East Texas).... This book is very brief when it comes to descriptions, etc. For example the Ruby-Throated Hummingbird gets 88 words, whereas in my Bull/Farrand edition of "The Audubon Society Field Guild to North American Birds, Eastern Region" I get 235 words. Also, unlike the Audubon Society book, Kaufman's book does NOT break the text into secions, and it contains no section under each species describing its nesting/egg characteristics.... I have not researched why the Latin species names are different in the two books (may not be a big deal), but one example is that my Carolina Chickadees are called "Poecile carolinensis" by Kaufman, and "Parus carolinensis" by Bull and Farrand. (Those more dedicated than I may wish to check with the American Ornithologists' Union Check-Lists and Supplements).... I have given this book 4 stars despite the above issues because in most other ways this is an excellent birdbook.... I liked the photo-illustration of the juvenile Northern Cardinal, which clearly shows the distinctive dark beak (adults have reddish or orange beaks).... The range maps make effective use of the color, using blue, light blue, red, pink, dark purple, light purple, grey, and white (8 each) to distinguish between scare and common distributions within winter range, summer range, migratory range, and 'all-seasons' range.... This is a pretty good book, and well worth adding to one's library -- but it is not the 'perfect reference.' I'm still looking......
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