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I am a firm believer that birders should invest in two categories of field guide: those they will need and those they want to need. New guides and references for the areas you reliably visit increase your knowledge, which is a worthy endeavor indeed. But guides to parts of the world you’ve never yet visited, [...]

In the arena of North American avian field guides, illustrated guides have reigned supreme. However, if one could imagine an arms race between illustrated guides and photographed ones, it is safe to say that the latter have taken huge strides in recent years in closing the gap. Sure, everyone loves The Sibley Guide to Birds [...]

Anyone who has ever visited the Greater or Lesser Antilles can attest that the 564 fantastic bird species known to appear in the West Indies deserve a high-quality field guide. The current consensus is that the finest field guide to the exotic archipelagos of the Caribbean is Birds of the West Indies by Herbert Raffaele. [...]

I’ve been on record for years as endorsing David Allen Sibley’s masterwork, The Sibley Guide to Birds as the first and foremost reference guide for anyone at all who looks at North American birds. Whether you consider yourself a bird watcher or not, you’ll never regret having this book on hand. But does Sibley’s preeminence [...]

Shorebird season is upon us once again and with the waves of undifferentiated brown and gray birds arrives yet another resource by which to tell them apart. Shorebirds of North America, Europe, and Asia: A Photographic Guide by Richard Chandler is an excellent addition to any shorebirder’s library.
With only 217 species worldwide, shorebirds are not [...]

A whole ten days ago - or about thirty posts in ‘10,000 Birds’ time - we asked for your help supporting a friend of mine, ex-pat Brit birder/ID expert Richard Crossley, secure a TV deal for a programme he is aiming to make. Many of you responded (thanks) by filling in an online survey, and [...]

My most recent birding excursion to Guatemala was immensely improved by the addition of two invaluable items. With my new Swarovski SLC 10×42s, I saw so much more than I ever had before. And with Birds of Mexico and Central America by Ber van Perlo, I was able to identify a lot more of what [...]

If you have any plans to bird Mesoamerica you need to purchase A Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America posthaste.  The two who put the guide together, Steve Howell, who did the text, and Sophie Webb, who did the plates, spent over seven years on the project and the expertise that [...]

The advent of advanced computing and the internet has been a incalculable boon to birders everywhere. However, the one area where birdwatchers have been slow to cross the digital divide has been in the realm of species identification. We birders just haven’t had good reason to leave our field guides on the shelf. But with [...]

So you want a free copy of the Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America, don’t you? Of course you do. The question is how you can get one. Well, thanks to our friends at Houghton Mifflin, we are giving away two copies of Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America. My question [...]

As most birders will undoubtedly be aware this month is the centenary of Roger Tory Peterson’s birth. Given that RTP (I can’t bring myself to casually call such a legend ‘Roger’, and using ‘Peterson’ sounds a bit brusque and disrespectful somehow - like calling The Queen ‘Windsor’) is indisputably one of the most important naturalists [...]

Ah, what a time to be a young birder in America! Not only is there an endless, free torrent of thrilling birding content online, but some of our sharpest minds have tackled the thorny task of creating a field guide strong enough for an adult, but made for a kid. Thus we have Bill Thompson [...]

A new field-guide by the birding powerhouse family that is Bill Thomson III and Julie Zickefoose, published by the excellent Houghton Mifflin in the notable “Peterson Field Guide” series? Now there’s a pedigree that should appeal to most birders - after all it’s almost guaranteed that it’ll be well-written, well-illustrated, and beautifully put-together. And [...]

I’ve spent quite a few hours lately reading and paging through my recently arrived field guide, Birds of Europe. With a planned trip to Germany in October I want to be prepared to identify everything I see and hear…which isn’t too likely but I can dream, can’t I?
Having never birded outside of the [...]

The 3 Bs of birding, those items without which this activity just cannot be enjoyed fully, are Bins, Books, and Birds. That last B probably goes without saying, while the first one can be considered the least essential of the three, though still mighty important. Books, on the other hand, are almost as essential to [...]

Summer, by which I mean true summer and not just that fallow period after spring migration subsides, is finally upon us. In many parts of the world, summer means shorebirds, a prospect that inspires equal parts excitement and trepidation. This loose organization of sandpipers, phalaropes, lapwings, plovers, oystercatchers, stilts, and avocets represents a little [...]

The first thing one notices about Pete Dunne’s Essential Field Guide Companion is its intimidating bulk. This massive tome, larger even than The Sibley Guide to Birds, is not likely to accompany any but the strongest-backed birders into the field. Next is the astonishing realization that, apart from the dust jacket, this book is [...]

The field guide guiding us on our January 2006 trip to the Bahamas was A Field Guide to the Birds of the West Indies by James Bond. This volume, written by one of the most well respected names in Caribbean aviafauna, edited by Roger Tory Peterson, and illustrated by Don R. Eckelberry, Earl L. [...]

Collins Bird Guide (Britain and Europe), K Mullarney, and Svensson L et al (Collins 2001)
I’m often asked by colleagues in the US, “Charlie, which field-guide should I get for a trip to Europe?”. If they’d asked me this in the 1990s, chances are I’d have had to list a number of then current Guides [...]