Kaufman Field Guide To Nature Of New England: A photo-packed guide with 2,000+ images to identify birds, plants, and wildlife across New England's woods, beaches, and backyards

by Kenn Kaufman, Kimberly Kaufman

Whether you’re walking in the woods or along the beach, camping, hiking, canoeing, or just enjoying your own backyard, this book will help identify all your nature discoveries. With authoritative and broad coverage, using nontechnical and lively language and more than 2,000 color photographs, this guide is an essential reference for nature lovers living in or visiting New England.

Genres: Nature, Reference, Animals, Field Guides

416 pages, Paperback

First published October 9, 2012

About the author

Kenn Kaufman (born 1954) is an American author, artist, naturalist, and conservationist, with a particular focus on birds.

Born in South Bend, Indiana, Kaufman started birding at the age of six. When he was nine, his family moved to Wichita, Kansas, where his fascination with birds intensified. At age sixteen, inspired by birding pioneers such as Roger Tory Peterson, he dropped out of high school and spent several years hitchhiking around North America in pursuit of birds. This adventure eventually was recorded in a memoir, Kingbird Highway.

Thereafter he spent several years as a professional leader of nature tours, taking groups of birders to all seven continents. In 1984 he began working as an editor and consultant on birds for the National Audubon Society, a connection that continues to this day. Gradually he transitioned from tour leading to a full-time focus on writing, editing, and illustrating, always on nature subjects. His first major book, the Peterson Field Guide to Advanced Birding, was published in 1990. This was followed by another dozen books, including seven titles in his own series of Kaufman Field Guides. His next book, The Birds That Audubon Missed, is scheduled for publication in May 2024.

Currently, Kaufman devotes most of his time to writing books and painting bird portraits. His paintings have been juried into several prestigious exhibitions. He is a Fellow of the American Ornithological Society, a recipient of the Eisenmann Medal from the Linnaean Society of New York, and the only person to have received the American Birding Association's lifetime achievement award twice.

Kaufman resides in Oak Harbor, Ohio with his wife, Kimberly Kaufman, also a dedicated naturalist. Kenn and Kimberly mostly work on separate projects, but they collaborate as the "birding experts" for the popular Birds & Blooms Magazine.

Reviews

[Abby Hanson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty much my Bible to plant identification at the Vermont state park I work in. It doesn't have everything, but this can be excused by the breadth of topics—rocks, constellations, wildflowers, shells, fish, snakes, mammals, birds, bushes, ferns, trees. I found the introductory sections (anatomy of a wildflower, geology overview) to be helpful, and the pictures were great. My one complaint is that I wish there was more fungi information—mushroom are given like, two pages in this 400 page book.

[Dan Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a handy one-volume guide to mammals, birds, reptiles, trees, and more. It is very helpful in identifying species. I use it almost every day as I learn the birds of Cape Cod. After living for 13 months on Cape Cod, we have moved to the west, so I will not be using this on a daily basis any more, but it was a very valuable companion for our time there. In our yard we saw raccoons, striped skunks, white-tailed deer, chipmunks, squirrels, coyotes, flickers, cardinals, titmice, orioles, blackbirds, eagles, osprey, hawks, and even heard great-horned owls.

[Christine Poitras · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just picked up this book today and WOW, it covers many topics such as rocks/minerals; constellation placements in the sky for all 4 seasons; wildflowers; trees; primitive plants; mammals; birds; fish; insects; ocean critters; seaweed...the list truly does go on!
Just a few days ago I took a picture of some strange yet unique 'fungi' on a tree stump...come to find out it's British Soldier lichen!
I'm in absolute awe how much information contained in its 400 pages; it is a true must-have if you are a lover of all types of New England life. ♡

[Knit and Purl Girl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! If you love nature or live in New England, you need this guide! I was first introduced to Kaufman’s guides over 20 years ago by my late father. This one is amazing - from plants to birds, mammals to reptiles, even shells - this book has it all. Easy to look up a certain specimen and hard to put down. Love love love!

[Deborah Chase · Rating 5 out of 5]

Keep this in your day bag for exploring New England. We did, and since we've moved to Georgia it's become a balm for homesickness as we flip through the pages remembering hikes and rambles by the Flora and Fauna we found there. It's very user friendly, even for children.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book. Learned quite of bit. Helped to identify things that I wasn't sure of.