I am an advanced-amateur birder, and I own four separate bird guides. I live in the Bay Area, and this is by far the guide I use the most. I’ve owned it for three years, and virtually every bird I’ve seen has been within its pages. It’s very easy to navigate because of its “thumbnails” in the opening pages – you can easily spot your bird there without having to flip through the whole guide.

It’s also very well written. It is always eloquent, occasionally humorous, and does a wonderful job of capturing the personality and “feel” of each bird. A problem I have with the overrated Audubon guide, and even sometimes with the fine Sibley and Stokes guides, is that they are too consistently technical. They rarely give unusual background or personality information about the birds. By contrast, this Fix-Bezener guide has something pleasurable to read in every entry.

Some folks might want to supplement this guide with the Stokes Field Guide, Western Region, because it includes photographs. Or perhaps with a Sibley guide if you really want to get into the details. But for 90% of Northern California birders, this single guide will do just fine.

Quite good. Like the indexing the most. Very handy for newer birders to the area or people starting with birding in Norcal (highly recommend).
3 areas could improve.
1- comparison section is good, but does not cover similar looking birds of other families (e.g: compares short billed dowitcher with long billed dowitcher but need this to be clapper rail vs willet vs dowitcher)
2- need pictures of both flight and sitting positions for some birds (e.g: different hawks, others like northern mockingbirds)
3- a bit smaller size will make this a better field guide