The Encyclopedia of Birds

Rating:
Summary: For bird lovers, this book is your Bible!
Review: I love ALL the books that make up the "Facts On File" series, and this book is no exception. It's filled with lush, detailed, extraordinary illustrations, photographs, and plenty of facts about bird anatomy, physiology, and evolution.

It's not as detailed as a professional ornithologist's reference work. Also, it's not as handy to take outside as a Roger Tory Peterson field guide. Still, it's the BEST single reference book a bird watcher will EVER need!

Buy it!

Rating:
Summary: For bird lovers, this book is your Bible!
Review: I love ALL the books that make up the "Facts On File" series, and this book is no exception. It's filled with lush, detailed, extraordinary illustrations, photographs, and plenty of facts about bird anatomy, physiology, and evolution.

It's not as detailed as a professional ornithologist's reference work. Also, it's not as handy to take outside as a Roger Tory Peterson field guide. Still, it's the BEST single reference book a bird watcher will EVER need!

Buy it!

Rating:
Summary: If Bird Watching Simply Isn't Enough For You
Review: The problem with birding books is that they mostly just tell you what a given bird looks like. If your curiosity about feathered creatures goes beyond just appearances here is the book for you. It's a big, 450-page book that is packed with information. This is not just a big picture book, though it is full of beautiful color shots. It's mainly a reference book that describes, by species, birds' lives in detail, covering such topics as mating, nesting, communication, feeding, and socialization. There are many fascinating sidebars, such as the one describing why owls have such broad heads, and the one on the Hoatzin chick's claws on its wings that enable it to climb around trees while still an infant. There is excellent material on how various birds have developed features that have enabled them to adapt to their environment - probably the best know example being the beaks of finches.

And, best of all, this encyclopedia is interestingly written. It's informative, but not drearily academic. It's one of those books that you can just open up to any page and find yourself reading something truly fascinating about birds. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Poorly organized.
Review: There is a great deal of fascinating, and very useful information here, and if the writing style is a bit didactic, it's hardly soporific. Still, it would seem to me that an "encyclopedia" should be organized in some way (preferably alphabetically) that is comprehensible to the layman. Granted, there's a fairly good index that allows one to find the entry that one is looking for, but the book as a whole is apparently organized by order and suborder, which makes it impossible for the layman to pick up the book and find a given entry in a reasonable amount of time. This strikes me as a fairly serious flaw. For example, we start with ostriches, rheas, emus and cassowaries, progress through kiwis and tinamous, progress to penguins, loons, and grebes; hummingbirds are roughly halfway through the book, and we finish with crows. Jays have no entry of their own, but are lumped with crows, as sparrows are lumped with buntings, tanagers, waxbirds and weavers. It's very difficult to find the method to this madness.

Granted, three stars is a bit low for this book, but four would have been too high.

If you need a reference book on birds that has a lot of information, and are willing to spend the time sorting through the incomprehensible organization to find that information, this is an excellent choice, but if you want a quick "field guide" that not only gives good information but that is easy to use, this would be a bad choice.

Rating:
Summary: Poorly organized.
Review: There is a great deal of fascinating, and very useful information here, and if the writing style is a bit didactic, it's hardly soporific. Still, it would seem to me that an "encyclopedia" should be organized in some way (preferably alphabetically) that is comprehensible to the layman. Granted, there's a fairly good index that allows one to find the entry that one is looking for, but the book as a whole is apparently organized by order and suborder, which makes it impossible for the layman to pick up the book and find a given entry in a reasonable amount of time. This strikes me as a fairly serious flaw. For example, we start with ostriches, rheas, emus and cassowaries, progress through kiwis and tinamous, progress to penguins, loons, and grebes; hummingbirds are roughly halfway through the book, and we finish with crows. Jays have no entry of their own, but are lumped with crows, as sparrows are lumped with buntings, tanagers, waxbirds and weavers. It's very difficult to find the method to this madness.

Granted, three stars is a bit low for this book, but four would have been too high.

If you need a reference book on birds that has a lot of information, and are willing to spend the time sorting through the incomprehensible organization to find that information, this is an excellent choice, but if you want a quick "field guide" that not only gives good information but that is easy to use, this would be a bad choice.