This National Audubon Society field guide to birds has lots and lots of nice, but small, photos of birds. That’s nice. This guide also includes most of the birds of the region. Those are the plusses of this book. There are, however, a number of minuses that come along with this book.
First of all, no photograph-based field guide can show the important characteristics needed to identify most birds as clearly as a good illustration can. Next, the only info that accompanies each photograph is the common name of the bird, along with its gender, average size, and a reference to a page number to a section in the back of the book that provides all of the descriptive narrative information for each species. That info includes each bird’s physical description, voice (call), habitat, nesting info, and geographic range (with a map by the info — that’s nice). The part that’s frustrating for me is that I have to spend time flipping back and forth between the photo section at the front of the book and the info section at the back of the book in order to get the info I’m looking for! While I’m in the field birding, that’s a hassle! I therefore much prefer the illustrated format that has pictures and descriptive info of the Peterson Guides to the Audubon guides.
Still, the Audubon guides are useful, though I use mine primarily as a secondary source, and it usually stays inside when I go out — Peterson is my guide of choice.
I am, by the way, a novice birder myself, and find that the Peterson Guides help me to ID birds faster and with fewer errors than the Audubon guides do.
5 points for photos, but 3 points for ease of use, for 4 points overall.
Good luck,and happy spotting!
Alan Holyoak, Dept of Biology, Manchester College, IN

I have used many of Audubon’s Field Guides, and they are very helpful and usually organized and easy to understand. However, this one is extremely complex and confusing.
When I find an interesting bird, I would go grab my binoculars and field guide and look it up. I go to the correct catagory and frantically search for the bird. When I find it, it gives me a detailed color picture that helps identify the bird. However, if you want more information, it than refers you to a different page, hundreds of thin pages away. You than need to go and find the page, but by then, the bird is gone. When I do get to the page, it is filled with wonderful detailed information of appearance, voice, habitat, nesting, range, map of habitat, and a brief summary.
The book is nice, but I would recommend buying another one with more organization.