Identify Yourself: The 50 Most Common Birding Identification Challenges - Softcover

Bill Thompson III; Julie Zickefoose; Kenn Kaufman; The Bird Watcher's Digest

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0618514694 ISBN 13: 9780618514694

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005

Synopsis

Written by the experts at Bird Watcher's Digest, Identify Yourself gives beginning and intermediate bird watchers a helping hand with some of the most confounding identification challenges -- birds that are commonly encountered but difficult to tell apart. Combining clear, easy-to-understand text with beautiful illustrations that show key field marks, Identify Yourself is the solution to identifying many of North America's hard-to-distinguish birds..

About this title

About the Author

Bill Thompson III is the editor of Bird Watcher’s Digest, a bimonthly magazine with 70,000 subscribers. Julie Zickefoose is a widely published natural history writer and bird artist. Bill and Julie live on an eighty-acre nature sanctuary with their two children.

Review

You've spotted a cute little ringed plover down by the shore-but wait! Is it a semipalmated plover? A piping plover? A Wilson's plover? Don't panic, says Thompson, the editor of Bird Watcher's Digest and the author of Bird Watching for Dummies: it's easier than you think. Sections on back color, leg color, bill shape and bill color plus excellent color illustrations by Julie Zickefoose (to whom Thompson is married) will straighten you out in no time. And if "separating long-billed dowitcher from short-billed dowitcher is one of the single most difficult identification problems in North America," at least figuring out the difference between horned grebes and eared grebes is a little easier. In clear, encouraging prose, Thompson addresses dozens of other identification problems, reminding readers that in greater challenge lies greater reward. He also offers readers the "Top 20 Rules of the Bird Identification Game," which include reminders to look at the bird more carefully than the bird book, to take notes and to trust your instincts.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
  (Publishers Weekly )

 basic birding guide will help identify many birds, yet there are numerous times when a beginning or intermediate birder needs more assistance-added ornithological detail, comparative comments, and more identification tips-that such a field guide does not have space to provide. That's where this new volume will delight and aid. Drawn from the column of the same name in Bird Watcher's Digest, the book is not intended for the field but as preparation before or a check after field identification. Covering 50 common identification challenges, including waterfowl, wading birds, hawks, gulls, crows, warblers, sparrows, and more, the text also provides plentiful comparative color plates illustrating additional marks, postures, and behaviors. Authored by the editor and staff of Bird Watcher's Digest and illustrated by a noted natural history writer and artist, this is an important resource to add to most public and academic collections. Expect it to fly off the shelf. (Illustrations seen in black and white.)-Nancy Moeckel, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.  (Library Journal )

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0618514694
• ISBN 13: 9780618514694
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 392