The Birder's Journal

Rating:
Summary: Good Bird Note Book
Review: As a black and white companion to the National Geographic bird book it is great. This note book gives you room to write and draw on the species of birds. One can use this book as a "life list" and record your sightings, locations, etc., into this. It is amazing to sit down with this book years later and review your past findings. This book goes along exactly with the bird book and I usually keep both with me at all times for recording and identifying.........

Rating:
Summary: An excellent gift for any North American birdwatcher
Review: Now available in an updated and expanded second edition, Mel Baughman's The Birder's Journal is a consumable volume for the personal use and notations of North American birdwatchers. Though it has very basic information on over 60 North American bird families, the bulk of this thick compendium consists of accurate, detailed black-and-white sketches of over 850 bird species, next to allotted writing space where the birdwatcher can make his or her own notes about when, how, and where that species of bird was successfully observed. The Birder's Journal is a perfect aid to keep track of the all the different feathered friends one has seen, and an excellent gift selection for any North American birdwatcher.

Rating:
Summary: NGS Field Guide - A Disappointment
Review: This journal is a gray-scale (black and white) version of the popular and very useful NGS field guide. Nothing new is added except blank lines for brief field notes - which replace the descriptive text adjacent to the colored illustration as found in the field guide. Most - but not all - of the birds currently listed by the AOU are represented.

However, as a "fully illustrated" journal in which to record one's first sightings, it functions only marginally better than the check-boxes in a field guide index - again, by providing something more than a margin in which to record notes.

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Also compare the Audubon Society's entry into the field. This pretty journal, in the style of a diary, would serve quite appropriately as a gift for a young woman or teenage girl just beginning the birding experience. Very few of the 1000+ birds in the AOU Checklist for our region are represented, however.

Each of these journals serves the purpose of providing space for keeping track of the birds one has identified in the field, but each will appeal to a select audience. The NGS Birder's Journal doesn't go beyond the basic requirement of providing space.

Life-List Illustrated and the Audubon Journal bring a desirable esthetic element to the process.