This book is among the leading candidates in the race for best tree identification book ever. It has a huge advantage in that it first appeared in 1917 (as Native Trees of Canada, already a good book) and has been continually revised and updated since. This book pretty much has it all: clear distribution maps, fine line-drawings of details and pretty decent color pictures of various other details (including bark).

Of course Canada has the 'advantage' of not having many tree species, which makes it easy for an author to be complete. Just imagine Harri Lorenzi trying to cover Brazil to the same degree of detail!

It is a pity the US has no other books on this same scale, and that this degree of detail is only available for its Northern part (OK, California has some fine tree books too!).

I put Tree Finder or Winter Tree Finder in my pocket when I go for a walk, but this is the book I take out when I get home to learn more, or just for the pleasure of looking at the photos and illustrations. Very thorough--for instance, photos show examples of what the bark looks like on both young and mature trees for most species. It's really a Canadian book (published in Canada as Trees in Canada), but coverage is good for the northern tier states of U.S.

If you want to know about trees in the northern US and Canada this is the one book to buy. It's certainly not a pocket field guide, but for learning trees in all seasons, reproductive parts, bark, leaves/needles it's great. Lots of good color photos. I use this one the most of all the tree ID books I own. Even more than Barnes & Wagner, because of the pictures.

Our family has owned a patch of shore/forest land in Wisconsin for 20 years although none have been birders. With this disk we easily learned to identify species and discovered the diversity that we never noticed previously. The call/naming/call format of this disk is excellent for new birders and the numbers of species covered is ideal. I use the Stokes disk set as a reference but the name/call format and large number species covered does not facilitate learning the calls.

John Feith's Bird Song Ear Training Guide is a unique and impressive CD audiobook providing instructions on how to recognize songs of birds common to the states of the Midwest and Northeast (including Wisconsin where almost all the bird songs were recorded and the post-production work was done). Each distinctive bird song is followed by a mnemonic or a short description. The bird is identified and a review sound is played again that fixes the song's identity in the mind of the listener. The Bird Song Ear Training Guide is enhanced with a quiz format which will aid the listener to focus on learning how to identify the bird songs. A complete list of bird species and mnemonics is included in an insert. All profits from this enthusiastically recommended CD instructional for birdwatchers will go to the Nature Conservancy and the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology.

Actually you'll find it useful and accurate too. Fun to use, lots of songs, and my two feline birders went bananas. Who would know better? Good value for the money and the proceeds go to a good cause.

This book has a wealth of information about a wide variety of bird topics. It has bird anatomy, songs, how to build a nest box, etc. The main chapter of this book, named 'The Habitat BirdFinder' is a field guide to about 100 of the most commonly seen birds in North America, and isn't in any specific order, but by which habitat it is most likely to be seen in. It is very useful, with a large photograph and colour drawings with text for each bird. The range maps are very clear and easy to use. In the back of the book there is a good selection of other books and resources, including local birding organizations.
If you are looking for a first birding book, to get you started and familiar with birds, then this is a great start.

This book has been an excellent addition to my library on birding. Splendid photography! Helpful tips!Interesting insights and all at a great price. The book is beautiful and is clearly of high quality. You won't be disappointed!

This is a wonderfully put together reference book for bird watchers. I also gave one to my father as a gift and he just can't put it down. The pictures are teriffic and there's a lot of information about each bird. I would recommend it to anyone that enjoys birds.

This is a really great book. It explains way more then you would expect for a field guide. It goes in depth about each plant, animals that depend on them and other interesting tidbits that you wont find in any other guide. The awsome illustrations are done so beautifully and true to life no one should have any problems idtentifying plants on the trail. They also truly give this book a nice touch. It's like a book of old documenting new discoveries!

This is a must have book if you live in areas with swamps/bogs. Its so accurate I'm just amazed. It is also very easy to use. It has drawings and it talks not only about id of the plants but also their "lifestyle" (e.g. how they reproduce, various ideosyncasies of the plants, insects that are associated etc.) Each plant also has a short section on lore which adds a nice bit of history. I really like the book

For those people who already kind of know their way around the forest, and are more interested in what they are going to see ASSOCIATED with the plants they see than what an Audobon book says, this is a naturalist's dream come true!

Great b/w illustrations of not only leaves and fruits, but insects, diseases, toothmarks, clawmarks and nests that can be found on and around the trees and plants listed in the book...

Also highly recommended is the Forest and Thicket book by the same authors...

The collaborators who put this book together are dedicated scientists with years of experience in the field. I admire their work. But I find on thing missing from the discussion of brain versus body size. They establish ratios of brain to body size and declare this is one method of measuring the intelligence of the animal, i.e. the larger the brain is in relationship to the body, the smarter the animal is. But they do not explain why a large body needs a large brain. After all, whale sharks of the same size as sperm whales have brains smaller than your fist while the sperm whale brain is six times larger than the human brain. Perhaps it is the large brain which requires the large body. The laws of physics would prohibit a brain developing in a very small body. Necks breaking and cortical sheering would be a problem.

I have read through this book while doing some research on dolphins and marine mammal conservation and must say that this has some information that I could find nowhere else. This book hits on such a large variety of information relating to dolphin biology and conservation that I cannot believe that they fit it all into one book.

Good to see Samantha successful in life. I knew her back when she was a struggling student at Eckerd College.

A great book for anyone in any business. I find myself reflecting back to it often to stimulate thinking. It is an after action review of success and failure in past and current businesses. An excellant source for insight into intelligent business thinking.

A must read book if you "know" your company is in great shape.

I give this book 10 stars.

I have been a fan of these exquisite little bird guides since I first stumbled on volume 1 at Hearthside Books in Juneau, Alaska in 1988. At that time, I decided to purchase a raft of these guides and they became excellent gifts for other lovers of wildlife over the years.

Since then I have passed both volumes around to our guests when I do tours as a naturalist in Haines, (SE) Alaska. The drawingsare so realistc, even the Elderhostlers think they are real birds...and laugh as they figure out the joke...Highly recommended for all those with a sense of humor and love of birds. Thank you Sills!!!!

I have been afflicted with Serious Birders Disease. You know the symptoms, flitting from Peterson to Stokes to Sibley and beyond, memory fading. Was it a yellow bill, blue legs, black feet or was it black bill, yellow feet? It gets worse and worse with each passing hour. They all begin to look alike. I was becoming frantic.

Finally a friend came to the rescue with the best antidote yet - the little field guide by Ben, Cathryn and John Sill "A Field Guide to Little-Known & Seldom-Seen Birds. Symptoms disappear within 24 hours. Laughter, after all, is the best medicine. Never again will I venture into the field with quite the same driven attitudes - unless, of course, I think I have finally happened upon the elusive ringed gimpy (see pp 26-27).

I highly recommend this book as a gift for any birder. Anyone who has attempted to find a way to tell a "greater" from a "lesser" or who has tried to learn those hard to recall Latin names will appreciate it!

The remarkable thing about this book is the beautiful close-up colour pictures of almost every species. Not all the pictures are flawless--anyone who's ever photographed birds knows how hard it is to get a good, detailed, well-lit close-up shot--but they are very high quality and make this both a gorgeous coffee table book and a valuable identification aid.

The coverage is not as complete as, say, Peterson's Field Guide to the Birds of Texas, which I also own. The Peterson has, for example, many more of the confusing fall warblers; the Tveten explicitly says that detailed coverage of the warblers is outside its scope. But the differences in coverage are generally of the rarer birds; anything a casual bird-watcher is likely to see will be in the Tveten; and the Peterson has few good colour plates.

This is a larger book than is really convenient out in the field, though. Plus the descriptive sections, while well-written and interesting, aren't organized in a way that makes it easy to quickly find important field marks or check the range. If you want to get just one book I'd recommend this one; get another for completeness or for use in the field.

This book has beautiful photographs of Texas birds. It describes their songs, how they eat, mate, nest, care for offspring, and all in an interesting manner. The way the author describes birds, you know he has a great love for these winged creatures. Cedar Wax-wings are "courteous", Loggerhead Shrikes have "the inclinations of a hawk", Grackles are "bullies", Carolina Chickadees are "acrobatic", Horned Larks have a "rakish, devilish air", etc.. Believe it or not, these descriptions actually help me remember what the birds look like and what they are called. Highly recommended.

This colorful book thoroughly covers the wide range of birds in Texas. The close-up photography is stunning and provides for easy identification of birds encountered in the wild. Every aspect of each bird is described in depth in lively and interesting prose. The excellent organization of this book allows the reader to find the bird they are looking for quickly and efficiently. I highly recommend "The Birds of Texas". I only wish I had bought the hardcover edition instead of the softcover.

The discrete math course at our university is a sort of "rite of passage" for math majors- it introduces students to the idea of proofs, as well as basic set and graph theory and combinatorics. It is an introduction to the abstract aspect of mathematics. This book serves this purpose well, with a number of examples and drawings to illustrate concepts. However, this book explained induction in a manner that confused me. Also, our department wasn't too fond of this book- they switched to another after one semester. Still, I don't think it's too bad- unless the current book that the department uses is that much better.

As a student at Illinois state, I'm skeptical about all of the professors abilities... After all, these are the guys that consistently screw up addition in front of class.

After having a chance to complete half of this book in my Discrete Math course (mind you, I'm not a math major) I have definitely gained respect for ISU's math department.

I'm not sure if most authors really teach classes, or if they write books to fulfill their publishing requirements. I can tell you that the authors of Discrete math had the students in mind.

I've found this book to have exceptional examples, and well-explained, READABLE prose.

If you wanted to pick up a copy for self study, this would be a good book.... Yes a professor would be nice, but these guys did a good enough job that the book stands alone.

I am not a maths student but I used this book (the 4th edition) as a supplement for my combinatorial chemistry course and also my CRE course which has a section on spanning tree model. Quite easy to understand. Not bad as a reference for self-studying.

I used this field guide during my recent trip to Kenya and Uganda. Although it is by all means an excellent fieldguide I do have some remarks. A number of the plates contained errors, suggesting the artists didn't see these birds in the field. I realise it is virtually impossible for artists to see all species featured in a book such as this in the field, so that a lot of plates are drawn from skins. It is important however to use skins from the region itself, this may make a lot of difference. We came to the conclusion that for a number of species skins from west Africa were used. Especially the greenbuls had some misleading plates. For a number of species the Kenyan Zimmerman-book is probably better, although those plates lack in other respects.
In addition a number of the maps were incorrect, especially for Uganda.
Still, if you go to the region for birding, make sure to get this book, because it is definitely the best field guide around.

This book really sets a very high standard and we can only hope other parts of the world's tropics will get similar guides in due time. The plates are just about as superb as one could possibly wish for. When you compare this book with the new field guides that have recently come out for South America, it seems like there are two worlds! Just compare the flamingos, the osprey, or the parrots with the pictures you find in "The Field Guide to the Birds of Peru" and you know what I mean! There is also an excellent lay-out, with helpful concise text and useful range maps all neatly placed together. And the book is still amazingly compact.

After years of having one of the world's worst bird books, East Africa now has two of the best. The Zimmerman/Turner book on Kenya and Northern Tanzania, the work of 30 years, set a new standard of scholarship and illustration. This book draws on that one, but is even better for the tourist and field birder. It covers all of Uganda and Tanzania, as well as Rwanda and Burundi. It is smaller and lighter to carry. And the illustrations and their placement in related groups on the same page are simply outstanding. This is one of the best bird books in the world and will dominate the market for years to come.