A field guide that revolutionizes warbler identificationWarblers are among the most challenging birds to identify. They exhibit an array of seasonal plumages and have distinctive yet oft-confused calls and songs. The Warbler Guide enables you to quickly identify any of the 56 species of warblers in the United States and Canada. This groundbreaking guide features more than 1,000 stunning color photos, extensive species accounts with multiple viewing angles, and an entirely new system of vocalization analysis that helps you distinguish songs and calls.The Warbler Guide revolutionizes birdwatching, making warbler identification easier than ever before. For more information, please see the author videos on the Princeton University Press website.
Covers all 56 species of warblers in the United States and CanadaVisual quick finders help you identify warblers from any angleSong and call finders make identification easy using a few simple questionsUses sonograms to teach a new system of song identification that makes it easier to understand and hear differences between similar speciesDetailed species accounts show multiple views with diagnostic points, direct comparisons of plumage and vocalizations with similar species, and complete aging and sexing descriptionsNew aids to identification include song mnemonics and icons for undertail pattern, color impression, habitat, and behaviorIncludes field exercises, flight shots, general identification strategies, and quizzesA complete, page-by-page audio companion to all of the 1,000-plus songs and calls covered by the book is available for purchase and download from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Macaulay Library by using the link at www.TheWarblerGuide.com
This tough, lovely book from Princeton University Press won't be as handy as the many birdwatching apps you can now install on your phone, but those apps don't have the care or color of this grand little volume, nor can they be put on the birding/warbler bookshelf where this thing clearly belongs. My full review is here: https://www.stevedonoghue.com/review-...
Wood warblers are sometimes referred to as the rock stars of the bird world, and they certainly do draw vast and enthusiastic crowds of birders when they are in migration. And even as devoted followers of loud rock concerts might suffer from damage to their hearing, warbler fans often suffer from a common malady. It is known as "warbler neck." It comes from standing long periods under a large tree, looking straight up into its leafy canopy, trying to see a tiny bird perhaps 5.5 inches long and weighing maybe 1/3 of an ounce. For that is where most of these particular rock stars are routinely found and seeing them is not easy.
If you are able to actually see one and get a good look at it in spring and you have a moderately good field guide nearby, you will probably be able to identify it, because warblers in springtime are at their most colorful and most distinctive. If you encounter that same bird in autumn when it has shed its breeding colors and taken on the dull cloak of winter, you might not recognize it at all.
Well, Tom Stephenson and Scott Whittle are out to help you with that. They have put together a very useful book to aid the serious warbler fan in identifying the object of his or her devotion. Their guide to identification covers not just the markings of the birds but how to age and sex warblers on the wing and, especially, because their song is one of their main identifying features, how to listen to warbler songs and how to identify their "chip" and flight calls.
There are some 56 species of warbler that spend at least part of the year - usually spring and summer - on the North American continent and this big book features more than 1000 color pictures of them. These photos cover all color phases of the birds and show them in various poses. There are even visual "quick finders" included which show the birds side by side from different angles, including that angle of looking at the underparts of the bird when you are standing under that tree and looking straight up. Detailed species accounts show multiple views with diagnostic points emphasized and direct comparison of the plumage and songs of similar species.
The book uses sonograms to teach a new system of song identification that makes it easier to understand and hear differences between similar species, and, since this is the age of technology, there are interactive companion apps for iPhone and iPad.
In addition to all that, there are field exercises, flight shots, general identification strategies, and even quizzes to help you familiarize yourself with warblers and have a better shot at actually being able to identify that tiny scrap of feathers when you see it moving quickly from limb to limb in the field.
It is an impressive book that certainly will find a space on the bookshelf of many serious birders.
A free copy of this book was provided to me by the publisher for the purposes of this review. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own and were not compensated in any other manner.
Easily one of the best bird guides on a 'family' of birds. I would love for this format to be extended to other families (empids anyone?). The focus on variations in plumage, habitat and behaviour is a strong selling point. The unique thing about this book is the focus on songs and calls, and the treatment is superlative. Song files are available to supplement the sonograms and descriptions. The app is also excellent as it integrates the visual and aural components. Simply an excellent book.
Wow! Now that's a birding book! I picked this up while perusing the shelves at the gift store of a wildlife refuge. It had decent-sized pictures of a warblers and detailed descriptions so I brought it home with me. Once I started looking through the book, it's even better than I thought.
The book starts with terminology, an explanation of how to use the book's key, and detailed discussion of important markers you should pay attention to for identification purposes, including various parts of the anatomy, behavior, and sonograms for bird calls. There are then multiple pages comparing the birds from different angles (the head, the tail, the side, from below, from an angle) and a "quick finder" which includes pictures of birds grouped by locale and time of year for a rapid look-up, followed by more sonograms. (I'm not going to lie, sonograms don't do much for me, but this book gives an excellent explanation and comparison for those learning and for those who benefit from them.)
Then we get into the reviews of the individual birds. There are easy to read symbols for the bird's location on the map, location in the environment (on the ground, high in the trees, etc.), any pertinent behavioral identifiers (tail wagging, etc.), basic color markings/tail appearance, and body shape at the top. Each bird is then shown and described over several pages worth of information with three larger photographs on the first page, followed by multiple smaller photographs highlighting certain markers you should take note of (location, food color, tail color, etc.), similar species, and other useful identification notes. There are also sonograms for male/vocal birds and another large picture to finish at the end of the bird's section. The birds are divided by sex if they are sexually dimorphic, so that you get multiple pages of the male chestnut-sided and then you get just as thorough a look at the female chestnut-sided. They also do this for birds who have both a "bright" and "drab" appearance, so that you get good images and explanations for identification on all the warbler presentations you might see in the wild. The end wraps up with non-warbler look alikes to be aware of, a quiz, and then information on how the birds appear and behave in flight.
I'm one of those people who needs photographs in bird books - drawings, no matter how detailed, don't work for me. I think this book does an excellent job of showing both drawings and photographs by using the advantages of both. Photographs are used as much as possible so that you are looking at real birds with the general and detailed explanations and in the comparisons, whereas drawings are kept to the more basic images: the general color pattern (no details, just yellow top, pale bottom, etc.), the general bird shaped (as a silhouette), and the appearance of the underside of the tail.
The book is a bit chunky and big for taking out in the field but that's a result of how thorough it is, so I think that's a very forgivable offense. I need someone to write sparrow and bird of prey books like this.
I like this book. I generally like reading field guides cover to cover because I find the repetitive descriptions of colors and sounds soothing and the organized information dares me to memorize and revisit and make new connections and changes in my internal data base, but many field guides are collections of historic interpretations and author's biases and peeves. Not this one.
The Warbler Guide is a 550 page encyclopaedia to American Warblers that intimidated me when I recieved it for xmas. It begins by explaining what Warbler traits it will describe and how it will present the information and why. It is very consious of how a birder might use the book to quickly identify a bird in the field. The text makes me aware of how I arrange information in my own mind and how I use language to organise and string together the things i know about each species, and how different stimulous- sight, sound, context or language evoke different information from my own internal system.
The book goes on to describe the parts of a bird and the ways to see a bird. How to recognize color or contrast changes and how to notice its shape and behaviour. Once we know what details to look for its much easier to see.
The guide goes on the describe the sounds of song. It's music theory without human aesthetic, so it uses the language of physics and draws a little from music to train the reder to recognize elements of bird song that have transfered to how I listen to Robins and Blackbirds.
The book includes several pages of very detailed descriptions of each species. And includes some review and quizes as well.
I haven't read this book cover to cover, but it is by far the most excellent resource and ID guide I've seen on warblers. For amateur birders all the way up to experts who want more in depth information on warblers. We use this as a reference at our local park banding station.
Wow. This is a must have go to book for everything Warbler!!! Right now is peak warbler migration in my area. This book has it all. I’m so glad I got it.
Imagine: An entire book just about Warblers. This is an excellent reference that belongs in your library. Photos plus info help you learn about these beautiful birds.
Invaluable guide especially for a new birder. I have been lucky to have gone on bird walks with Tom Stephenson and I always learn something new. I look forward to his next book.
550 pages of North America's ornithological jewels. Pretty much the definitive visual guide to warbler identification. "Visual" is the word because there's nothing really about the species' ecology or habitats (cf. Dunne's field guide), which would have taken up much more space, but I missed it all the same.
This is a guide to the 56 warbler species of the USA and Canada.
You might think that there is hardly any need for a guide to a group of birds that are so patterned, so marked, so coloured and so …well, obvious! But there is, because they are quite confusing.
The Peterson Guide has a famous plate called ‘confusing fall warblers’ because they are! This book will help you identify males and females, young and old and spring and fall (or even autumn) plumages of this marvellous group of birds.
The whole book has a refreshingly fresh approach. The authors and illustrator have put a lot of thought into how really to help us identify these birds. This is definitely not ‘just another field guide’. It has a quiz at the back of the book to see whether you have assimilated any of the wisdom of the first 500+ pages.
The several pages of ‘Quick Finders’ are very good. These group images of all relevant warblers for easy comparisons so that you don’t have to do that thing of flicking from page to page to page. Some are geographic (eg eastern fall warblers), some are anatomical (faces – surprisingly useful, I think) and some are arranged by view (the 45 degree views from underneath are very useful – reflecting, as they do, a very usual way of seeing these birds up in the foliage).
There are masses of photographs – for example for mourning warbler there are 27 photographs of the bird from different angles etc and six more on the same pages of ‘comparison species’. This is just what you need.
Catherine Hamilton’s drawings are a great help too.
I used to be quite accustomed to ‘reading’ sonograms and making sense of them but I just wonder whether the space given over to them will help many of us to distinguish these birds by song and call. Maybe it will. I’d make sure you take some calls with you on your mobile phone so that you can literally compare notes in the field.
Americans are very keen on mnemonics for songs and there are some brilliant ones here (although whether they will actually help you in the field I am not convinced). For example the parula song is: ‘Parula is a jeweler, her rough necklaces rise up and snap at the top’ whereas Wilson’s is: ‘Pres Wilson started out strong but fell, gradually, due to repetitive policies’. A lot of thought has gone into these and some are quite memorably funny.
Some of the photographs are just stunningly beautiful – because these are cracking birds. Full page images of a few species are simply gorgeous. Take the northern parula on the cover – one of my favourite American warblers – as an example.
It’s hardly a pocket guide, and to lug it around when it won’t help you identify shorebirds, sparrows or flycatchers in the field, might make it a bit of a luxury. But if I could spend my life looking at spring warblers in the USA and Canada I’d be a happy man. For the ‘Big Week’ at Magee Marsh I would want this book at my side. There are apps associated with the book too, and I haven’t looked at the ebook but that might well be an easy way to carry this around – you’d want it in colour though, for sure. And I guess that it could come in very handy on Scilly or Fair Isle in the next few weeks – maybe? Who knows?
As you stare up into the branches, getting ‘warbler neck’, this book will ease the pain.
The warbler guide, is published by Princeton University Press and is available on Amazon as is Mark Avery’s book Fighting for Birds.
The celebrated new book The Warbler Guide is getting well-deserved attention at Michigan’s renowned Tawas Point Birding Festival in May. The authors, Tom Stephenson and Scott Whittle, will be attending and presenting on Friday evening, May 16th, as well as doing a workshop on Saturday, May 17th. (For further information, go to tawasbirdfest.com or michiganaudubon.org.) The book may be one you want to purchase, or it may be one to check out from the library. As any experienced birder knows, the first aspect to consider is always the overall shape and size—and this readily observable aspect of the book reveals it is larger than most guides and its weight is well over that of most field guides. Even though it is labeled on the back cover as a field guide, no one is going to go backpacking or on long hikes with this book. Sit in the woods with it, maybe. The densely bound 550+ pages are very heavy. That said, this book is incredibly comprehensive. Having read or scanned dozens of other birding books, I can honestly say this is one of the top birding books out there for depth and thoroughness of coverage. I would love to see the same effort given to other bird families. Extensive photos in each section make it easy to compare the appearance of your bird with a half-dozen or so similar species, to be absolutely sure of your id. There are a dozen or even more photos of each species, including pictures from underneath, the usual view for the canopy dwellers which has been mostly overlooked by past guides. The most valuable feature of the book is the small set of icons that runs the width of the page immediately under the species’ common and Latin names. I expect this set of icons to become standard in all future bird guides. The first is a small silhouette of the bird, showing the body shape, tail length, etc. Next is a stylized bird divided into three main zones, showing the basic coloration of the bird. Third is the undertail, which, again, is incredibly useful. Fourth is a small US range map, and, fifth, a tree and shrub diagram showing the bird’s usual habitat (ground, lower limbs, upper canopy, deciduous vs. evergreen, etc.). Certain species have additional diagrams showing behaviors (for example, the American Redstart hawking and cocking its tail. So much information packed into such a tiny space! Also not to be overlooked are the pages devoted to aging and sexing, as well as those with vocalization diagrams. Fairly standard methods of sound representation are used that some may find more complex than helpful. Even with phonetics and music training, I admit that these can be a little much at times. Don’t worry, you can skip them. The book can be partnered with a complete set of 1000 sound files available for download. Unfortunately, this is an additional purchase, rather than the more usual accompanying cd or free website. There are a number of useful charts that would be great as tear-aways or downloadable pages for carrying. Overall, an innovative and incredible new resource.
Not just useful for warblers, although loved the pix of warblers from underneath since that's the way we tend to see them. Will replace my cheatsheet from a Field Guide to Warblers of North America, http://books.google.com/books?id=ciCw.... I've gone through it once, but want to learn the songs and their visual representations. Love that the book is organized alphabetically by species too.
This guide gets very technical, however, it dedicates the first 99 pages in getting even a NEW birder up to snuff on understanding the techniques required to split warblers often to species or even sexed and aged for Spring and Fall, with looks from almost every angle. It is by far the best book I have seen for warblers available. It is not overwelming! It presents things in a way understandable to almost anyone. It is well worth the expense and even enjoyable to peruse. Enjoy!