This is a summary of several of the better books I’ve had the opportunity to review here, organized in general categories. This is written from a North American perspective since most of my readers are North American (though many of you live to the west of the “Eastern Region” … but you probably know that). So, when not specified, a book with a regional focus is likely to be for that area, and the “Outside the US” section is labeled thusly.

Everybody needs a basic field guide. If you need more than one field guide because you are a family of birders, or because you like to keep one in the car and one by the feeder, than make your second (and third?) guides different from your first, because there will be plenty of times you will want to look something up in more than one place. A field guide is a good starting point, but the “How to be a birder” section includes books that you will be very glad you read once you read them, and if you are going to pick one “how to” book for yourself or as a gift, make it the Kaufman Field Guide to Advanced Birding. If you know a young person getting interested in birding, the National Geographic Birding Essentials is essential, and if they are in the Eastern US, the Young Birder’s Guide is perfect.

I’ve not covered bird song here, other than the one, rather spectacular iBook.

Field and Identification Guides

• Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America (Peterson Field Guides) and related guides by Peterson (depending on your area) is still, in my opinion, the number one essential guide.
• The Kaufman Field Guide and the Smithsonian Field Guides are excellent second books, following the rule that if you are a birding family and don’t share well, get multiple guides but make them all different from one another.
• The Crossley ID Guide to Eastern Birds is too big to be a field pocketbook but too good, in the way the birds are presented, to not be one of your key books for birding in the region.
• Birds of North America and Greenland is a new guide to supplement the usual guides, covering the western edge of North America and Greenland in more detail than the usual. Maritime and New England birders need this one.

How to be a birder

• National Geographic’s Birding Essentials is for the new birder, covering how birding works, how to use bird guides, etc.
• The Young Birder’s Guide to Birds in Eastern North America is a field guide with help on how to go birding for kids about middle school age.
• How to Be a Better Birder is a more advanced guide but quite accessible to the noobie.
• The Kaufman Field Guide to Advanced Birding … if you don’t have this book you’re doin’ it rong.

Categorial Guides

• Hawks at a distance is a unique approach to bird identification using long distance photos and a “whole bird” approach.
• Petrels, Albatrosses, and Storm-Petrels of North America falls between the categorial category (a particular type of bird is covered) and academic books.

Regional Bird Guides Outside the US

• South Africa: Birds of Southern Africa is a classic now out in a new edition. Highly recommended.
• South Africa: I discuss two other Southern Africa guides here.
• Birds of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives
• Birds of Central Asia
• Cotingas and Manakins covers a major South and Central American class of birds, is a very new book and is rather spectacular.
• Antarctic Wildlife: A visitor’s Guide is not just birds, but it includes the birds you’d be likely to see on an organized tour of the Southern Continent.
• Birds of the West Indies
• Birds of Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire
• The Birds of New Jersey: Status and Distribution

Academic or Topically General Books About Birds

• The Birder’s Handbook is not new but it is fantastic, all about bird ecology and behavioral biology and stuff.
• The Atlas of Birds addresses diversity, behavior, and conservation of birds world wide.
• Bird Migration and Global Change
• How birds migrate
• Three academic books on bird migration
• Avian Architecture: How birds design, engineer, and build is a spectacular overview of bird nesting and related behaviors.
• Living Dinosaurs: The Evolutionary History of Modern Birds is a high priced academic book that includes a series of scientific studies of bird evolution from Dinosaurs to more recent times.

Bird Song (and more)

• Music of the Birds Volume 1 is an experimental book, in iAuthored iBook format, focusing on a handful of selected species in Eastern North America.

Children’s Books

• On the wing: American Birds in Migration
• How Birds Fly

Also, don’t forget to read ALL of my posts at 10,000 birds! There’s some other good posts there too.