A Birdwatcher’s Library
It turns out that one thing many birders do as they get more serious about the activity is collect books.
Most of my recommendations are biased by my being almost exclusively a United States birder, so I can’t be a huge help in other parts of the world in terms of recommendations. Most parts of the world do have their own guides, but you’ll need to search them out and evaluate them on your own (sorry!).
Recommended Field Guides
I’ve talked about getting your first guide already in a previous chapter, so refer to that for details on what I think is a good guide, but here are some of the books and apps you might want to consider:
All About Birds from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology is a wonderful online resource I find I’m using more and more as they continue to improve and expand it. It has expanded its coverage to much of the globe, not just North America, and continue to work to become a critical resource for all birders everywhere. It’s one limitation is that you need a device with a browser and an active internet connection to access it, so it isn’t useful in those places where you have a bird but no cell phone coverage.
David Sibley’s Guides are my favorite that use illustrations by far. It comes as an app (IOS and Android) as well as printed books. The smaller books intended to carry in the field are broken into two parts, Eastern and Western United States.
iBird Pro is my favorite app to carry on my phone next to the Sibley app, because it shows off both illustrations and photos for species. There’s a North American version and a UK version, as well as a guide specific to Hawaii and Palau. I don’t think the illustrations are as good as Sibley’s but the photos make up for it, but there are limitations and gaps to keep in mind in that this guide doesn’t always have good referencing information or photos on female and juvenile birds.
Regional Guides
If you’re birding a specific area, it can help to see if there are regional guides to the area and its birds. For instance, a regular resource for me before I moved to Washington was Alvaro Jaramillo’s American Birding Association Field Guide to Birds of California, a nice and concise guide to the California specific species (with really good photography).
Since moving to Washington, learning more about this state and its neighbor to the south has been an ongoing process. A couple of the books I refer to for this are A Birders Guide to Washington, from the Washington Ornithological Society and Birding Oregon by John Rakestraw. They are both good examples as a guide to the good birding locations in a region that you want to research before visiting.
Specialized Guides
At some point you might find yourself interested in learning more about specific birds or families of birds. Many families have guides written specifically to go into them in more detail than a general guide can. Here are some of my favorites:
Gulls Simplified by Pete Dunne and Kevin T. Karlson. Gulls are a great family to dive into, because they are widespread and found everywhere, but also vary widely between species and based on the age of the bird, so ID of gulls can be particularly frustrating to ID. This book saves me again and again as I run into younger birds that are a real challenge to ID.
Hawks in Flight by David Sibley, Pete Dunne and Clay Sutton. Hawks are a natural to grab birders interest, and getting a good ID of a hawk flying at some distance or altitude can be a challenge, and this is a very good book to tackle that problem and help you build the skills to get better at that challenge.
If warblers are your thing, then The Warbler Guide by Tom Stephenson and Scott Whittle should be on your shelf. Warblers are a great family of birds and this guide can really help you sort out the challenges and complications of getting a good ID of them.
If you want to learn more about sparrows, then Peterson Reference Guide To Sparrows Of North America by Rick Wright is a good book to help you study this fun family of birds.
Books about Birding
If you want to dig deeper into the world of birding, here are a few books I would recommend:
Sibley’s Birding Basics by David Allen Sibley is another book covering the basic ground I tried to cover in this book — how to get started.
Another good book for beginners to read would be Pete Dunne on Bird Watching, which also covers the concepts and challenges a new birder can benefit by studying.
And if you want to dive deeper into the fun and culture and craziness of birding, get a copy of Good Birders Don't Wear White: 50 Tips From North America's Top Birders, Good Birders Still Don't Wear White: Passionate Birders Share the Joy of Watching Birds, and How to Be a Better Birder. Each of them has some fun and interesting writing about birding, and each has occasionally sparked some — spirited — discussion among the birding community.
You might also consider The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession , but I think Kenn Kaufmann’s Kingbird Highway: The Biggest Year in the Life of an Extreme Birder is a lot better.
