Having just started bird watching as a hobby, I found the ‘Birds of the Carolinas Field Guide’ to be my most used birding book. While birding in North/South Carolina why thumb through a book of all North American birds? This book has the birds of the Carolinas sectioned by color making identification easier. The photos are clear with helpful text to help with identification.

I also bought the companion CDs with the sounds of the birds as well. Though the CDs are great reference (and I will undoubtably use them more as I learn more about birds), this book is where I spend much of my time.

We have two dozen field guides and identifiers for birds – this one book is faster than all the rest to identify what is at our feeder, on the trail or along the road. It almost seems too simple – why don’t all the other guides we have go by … color … seems too simple right? D’oh. I almost feel like I’m cheating when I use this book – other books seem too snobberish – read: if you are a *real* birder, use our complete guide. Find a bird, lookup the color or color combination, look through 10 pages and presto – identified. How hard can that be?

If you could only get one birding book … get this one. Or, in my case, if I only have room to pack one book, I always pack this one.

Side-note: The companion CDs are great too, and they match the pages up nicely to the book, but frankly I can’t identify by ear – maybe I’ tone deaf … but they are nicely arranged discs. My wife likes them more.