I foun this one a very good book, it doesnt have any photos, but color illustrations are very descriptive and useful.
Its a must have for beginners because you will find almost any caterpillar out therem of course so many of them are not in this book, but the common ones seen around there are in this book.
You wont find any problem to identify among them, they are very well differenced in the book.

It is a good book considering its size, and its price, youll find it practical.

If you've been looking for a book to help you identify caterpillars, you may have noticed that field guides for butterflies and moths are nearly useless in this regard. Entomologists don't seem to be nearly as fascinated with the larvae of these creatures as they are with the adults. But this is the guide you've been looking for! Although the First Guides are written for children, this book is suitable for adults as well and is by no means remedial. The book is made to take along at 3 3/4x7 1/4 inches in size and 128 pages long. It begins with an introduction to caterpillars which explains their structure, life cycle, protective mechanisms, and gives brief instructions for attracting and caring for caterpillars. This is followed by pictures and descriptions of 120 caterpillars. Each caterpillar is clearly illustrated for easy identification. Illustrations of the adult moths and butterflies are included, so you will know what the little critter will turn into. (All illustrations are drawings.) There is a description of each caterpillar which includes details of its appearance, size, diet, and where it is found. A few caterpillars that are dangerous to handle are marked with don't-handle signs. (They won't kill you; they cause skin irritation, pain, and rashes, at worst.)

Recommended for everyone who would like to know just what those caterpillars are and what they will become. A great gift for kids who like the outdoors. The book's only real shortcoming is that it is not comprehensive. We can always hope that the publisher will add more species in a later edition. In the meantime, this guide will enable you to identify most common species of caterpillar.

The kids have a wonderful time identifying all those catterpillers. They used to bring each one to me to help them identify what they were. Now they can do it themselves.

I found this book to be typical of all Peterson guides. It's a useful book to have but not the best available. In typical Peterson fashion the book shows illustrations of birds instead of photos. While some find this more useful for showing details all too often I've found that the drawings like little like the actualy birds.

However this book does contain the bird's comman and scientific name for each species. In addition it has a physical description of coloration and markings, a description of the habitats where they are likely to be found, their geographic distribution, notes on their song and any similar species when applicable.

I find that this is a nice addition to the Stoke's Field Guide which shows pictures instead drawings.

Definitely a nice addition to your library.

The Peterson Field Guide to Western Birds is the best such guide you will find. The nice thing about birds and birding is that there are few enough species out there that you can get virtually all of them in one regional guide.

This book is outstanding. It relies on illustrations rather than photographs to show markings and other details used to ID birds in the field. I find that photos are often sub-standard, not showing characters essential for identifying birds due to the position of the bird, markings of the individual chosen for inclusion in the book, etc.

In this book each entry includes a bird's common and scientific names, a brief physical description of the body and coloration, a drawing(s) of the bird, a brief description of habitats where they are likely to be seen, a blip about their geographic distribution, notes on their song, and reference to similar species (if any). The entry also refers the reader to a map number that shows the summer and winter ranges for each bird.

This is "the bird book" to have for western birds for the novice and experienced birder alike. If you've never had much luck figuring out which birds you are looking at try this book.

5 stars only because that's the highest rating possible.

Note: if you travel much throughout the USA, you ought to pick up the Peterson Guide to Eastern Birds as well -- it is the sister book to this one. With both of those books in hand you will be in good birding shape.

Alan Holyoak, Dept of Biology, Manchester College, IN

Often called the birdwatcher's "bible," Roger Tory Peterson's Field Guides revolutionized bird identification and started a series of books on everything from Atmosphere to Wildflowers. It is still one of the best tools for bird identification, especially for those just learning how to recognize different birds. Its text is straightforward, consistent, and well-organized, and the illustrations are unsurpassed. Taxonomic (name and species) changes will come and go, and no book is going to be able to keep up with all of them for very long. Fall birding will always be challenging, but this is still the best book to have if you only want to carry one.

....This set of audio tapes was a disappointment to me. I had wanted a set of bird songs to accompany my new Peterson Eastern Birds field guide, 4th edition.( Previously, I had owned the 2nd edition and its excellent, page-coordinated, accompanying tapes and had used them for years.) I bought this new set of audio tapes blind, so to speak, because they were shrink-wrapped with no real description visible. No one in any of the retail stores I consulted knew anything about them nor was willing to break into the shrink-wrapping.
....Birding by Ear, Eastern/Central is actually a 3-tape short course in identifying bird calls. It is essentially useless for field identification. To make use of this set of tapes, one would have to sit down and listen and listen and listen to interminable commentary by a sonorous male voice introducing bird calls in clusters that are of minimal use because they are grouped by similarity, which often doesn't translate into geography or habitat. The second side of the third tape is a "review" that is actually a test.... one must listen to a series of unidentified songs and try to remember what they are, after having spent the hours required to listen to the other 5 sides of the tapes.
.... The up side of this set of tapes is that the bird song recordings are excellent. They include both the song and the call. (But they are useless in the field in this format.)

If you live in North America east of the Mississipi and want to identify birds by ear, read on...

This audio set is a very well thought out and produced tutorial for introducing beginning "ear" birders to the world of birding by ear. The audio quality is excellent with several renditions of each song and call. The pace is well suited to the target audience - only after repeated listening will you want to skip ahead through sections. The groupings of similar songs seem well designed, and reflect situations in the field that pose problems. Each song is described verbally, with an onomatopoetic description. I wish the CD were coded so that sub-tracks could be accessed directly without the introductory descriptions, but the design of this set isn't as encyclopedia of song, rather as short course in learning how to identify song.

Buy this and the "More birding by ear", listen to them for 10 - 30 minutes a day (great drive time listening), and master the art of birding by ear!

Great learning tool for the novice and a great reminder for the seasoned veteran.

did you know that boxwood, the ever present suburban hedge, is mildly poisonous? i didn't! a very useful book to reference for what not to touch, eat, or annoy.

"Peterson's Field Guide to Venomous Animals and Poisonous Plants" is the first thing to be packed in one's backpack.It is essential to every hiker, camper, naturalist, hunter, bird watcher and nature lover. There are a hell of alot less hazards than benign plants and animals (although this varies somewhat according to region. The Mid-Atlantic and Northeast US has it easy compared to the Southwest) and while most people could identify a few, it doesnt make sense not to learn the 2-3 dozen major ones to avoid.

The book is up to Peterson's usual high standards in a field guide. It covers mammals followed by poisonous plants, shrubs/trees, vines, ferns and fungi. There are color photographs but the black and white drawings are the way to go for IDing. Most people will not read the entire book unless they're a hardcore naturalist or really, really bored in front of a campfire. I recommend checking out the hazards in your partiualr area icluding AT LEAST the following: 1. All poisonous snakes and their look-a-likes 2. Black Widow and Brown Recluse spider 3. Tics and Scorpions 4. Bees, Wasps, Fire Ants 5. Poisonous Plants including the Big 3: Poison Ivy, Oak and Sumac 6. Poisonous Mushrooms (not so you can learn which you can eat, but to understand the severity of eating just one wrong one)

There's alot that won't apply to you(save those for a rainy day) and some hazards are less hazardous than others. For example, the short-tail shrew is listed, but most people need not live in fear of "killer shrews". But knowing that their bite has some bite to it, maybe you'll avoid juggling those cute furry creatures. Also, large mammals aren't included, though bears and mountain lions can seem pretty hazardous to me in some situations.I recommend supplementing your reading with "Bear Aware" by Bill Schneider and "Mountain Lion Alert" by Steven Torres. In addition, I wouldn't trust this book solely to gather a gourmet wild mushroom feast, either. I've seen some books topping 1,000 pages on edible shrooms and they still might not be complete. Its best to leave the shrooms alone!
Finally, there are a few diseases found outdoors worth researching: Giardia, hantavirus, rabies, and lyme disease among others.

Also recommended: "Peterson's Wild Edible Plants" and "Medicinal Plants".

Before you dash out into the woods and pick some plants you think are edible, you might want to get this book and know definitely what will kill you, or really mess up your body. Excellent info, bright color pictures, and written for an easy understanding, this book should be in any nature enthusiast's library, right next to Newcomb's Wildflower Guide, possibly the best plant identification guide around.

This review is for the softcover version. I feel almost bad to give this great guide 3 stars. The book contains a lot of very good information - more so than many books several times larger. As such, it's an excellent reference for beginner and more advanced user alike. However, the book fails miserably for field use, which, ironically, it is supposed to be designed for.

The cover frays and acquires "dog-ears" in a relatively short time of field use. In contrast, the Audubon field guides use a much more resilient plastic softcover. The pages smude easily from finger oils - remember, this is a guide you should be able to use for 8 years or so (until the next edition) so these are unacceptable shortcomings IMHO. By far the biggest gripe I have with this book, however, is the the choice of red to identify galaxies, star clusters etc in the atlas charts. These marks completely disappear under red light(!!!), making the charts useless for finding deep sky objects in the field. Finally, how are you supposed to operate equipment and keep the book open? Because it lacks spiral binding, the only way to use it hands-off is to put a weight on the page you're referencing.

If you're looking for a great reference to use at home, this guide is hard to beat - in fact, I highly recommend it. However, look elsewhere for more useful star charts with deep sky objects to use in the field.

First, its great monthly sky charts - for both the southern and northern hemispheres, and its many detailed charts and diagrams (all in colors) will help you find almost any visible star, galaxy, nebula, consolation or planet. For the planets there are charts and diagrams about their trajectories and positions in the sky that are valid till 2010.
But beyond that, there's plenty of valuable info about most of the "popular" objects and consolations, accompanied by excellent pictures. And there are some other astronomy related tips for newcomers, such as on purchasing a telescope or binocular, or photographing the stars. All in all, it's an enjoyable and valuable reading book in addition to it being a great field guide.

Very easy to understand, unlike almost all the others.

Great charts for finding stars. Thanks to this book I now understand how to find a star from a star chart. Great pictures, and again I cannot state how clearly they explain things.

Steve Kress is a great ornithologist and I greatly admire the work he's done in wildlife species and habitat preservation--but this book is not one of his best achievements. Basic and sketchy, at best it might give you a few ideas, but you won't be able to really implement them from this book--you'll have to get much better and more complete references. Look on the audabon web site or other birdwatchers web sites for ideas, and donate the money you save from not buying this book to audabon.

As an avid gardener with an extensive collection of gardening and reference books, this is the most cherished and most consulted of any book in the house. It brings the garden to an interactive level and a site of much learning for adults and children! Inspiring and informative, The Bird Garden also carries the endearing beauty of presentation one would expect with an Audubon Society publication. Wonderful gift for gardener or birder alike. I keep a few copies on hand for birthdays and house-presents. Finally, with enough inspired souls...the birds and butterflies will stand a better chance in the world. Read all about it!

I have used this book in the winter and the spring of 2002, and the results have been more than I could have expected. The book is well written, nicely illustrated, and well organized. If you want to have one reference book on hand, then you would be wise to consider this one.

My 7yo daughter and I have had great fun identifying the birds in our backyard with this little book. It features the most common birds one might see. I like how they how it organized by size and type of bird (all the water birds are together, all the birds of prey, all the smaller Fenches and Sparrows, etc. Easy to find that way. There was one bird drawing that was more colorful than the actual bird we saw. This might be due to the fact that they don't picture every type of one kind of bird. It is a GREAT first guide for kids and adults that are just starting. I like also that it shows the male and female of a type.

If you're looking for a book that will show you the male and female of the species, this is it. It gives size and tells where the birds winter. It has a picture of each bird and if the male and female differ in appearance, it has a picture of both. Great little book. Very reasonably priced

This book is the latest edition in a long line of Peterson Field Guides. As such it has a lot to live up to. It is written in a similar format to the series most recent work on the Warblers of North America (John Dunn and Kimball Garrett, 1997) and includes the same basic categories of description, behaviour, habitat, similar species, status and conservation, and subspecies and taxonomic relationships in the species accounts.

The book covers over 30 species of hummingbirds that regularly occur in the United States or have the potential for occurence as vagrants from Mexico. It is entirely a photographic guide which has both advantages and disadvantages from paintings or illustrations.

Its a good 1st start, but there are some issues that need to be addressed. First, the photographs for each species are somewhat small, especially those that depict live birds in the field. This and the low-quality of some photos often obscure important identification features. On the other hand the plates showing close-up photographs of spread tail patterns and the head and bill are especially benefical (even if the birds are unnaturally depicted held in the hand). These characters are extremely useful in species identification, and I know of other guide that shows them so well (I have yet to look at Steve Howell's book on Hummingbirds, so I can't comment on that book).

The book continues the Peterson tradition of using arrows to point out important field characters. However, there seems to be a disparity between the photographs and the accompanying text adjacent to the plates. The end result is often confusion and leaves the reader trying to figure out what is specifically important about a particular feature. For instance, an arrow may point to a bill of a hummingbird, but it is sometimes difficult to find in the text what is diagnostic about that particular species bill. The information is there, but it is simply buried in the text and you have to read to find it. Bulleted highlights might make this easier.

Additionally, the accompanying text/captions for each plate are not arranged in a logical fashion which compounds the problem. In many cases they are written as a block of text describing the field characters for an sex/age class with data on individual species given below as subcategories. In many cases there is one paragraph giving species characters, but there are several photographs, none of which are referenced in the text. It would be better to address each photograph individually and mention the important points that are specifically shown in that photo separately instead of trying to write a broad description that is not connected with the pictures. This would make the guide more user-friendly and visually appealing (i.e. 4 photos on one page would correspond with 4 separate blocks of text describing each picture in one-to-one context). It may be that there is just too much information to present in a organized fashion. I realize this is a problem with any book that tries to cover the large amount of detail that this book presents.

The range maps for each species are exceptionally well done and appear up to date. They include the most current records of vagrants that I know of.

I especially like the inclusion of the many Mexican species that although have yet to be conclusively documented in the United States range close enough to warrant mentioning. This alerts the observer to the possibility of those species which are not typically shown in the standard North American bird guides. There are several species however that are mentioned but have no photographs (Golden-Crowned Emerald and Canivet's Emerald). Photos of these birds would have be useful.

Also important are the many photographs showing hybrid combination of hummingbirds. Hummingbird species tend to hybridize more regularly than other bird groups so these photos are a plus.

Finally, the information on Plumage Variation and Molt in the species accounts is a huge benefit.

Overall, the information in the book is accurate, informative, and useful. However it is perhaps a better guide for banders who have the bird in the hand and want to visually see examples of tail pattern, etc. (however, the book lacks those important measurements that the banders rely on). As a field guide it contains a massive amount of information that could overwhelm the backyard birder who simply wants to enjoy these feathered jewels. The book is geared mainly towards those advanced birders who are mostly aware of the many characters used to separate hummingbird species. Its definitely worth having if you are bibliophile or just enthusastic about birds.

I buy this book for my wife, who is an specialist on hummingbirds, and she said me that this guide is perfect for humms lovers, maybe basic for specialist (she recommends the Howell book). Anyway, BUY IT...is beautiful !

This book is wonderful!! I just finished reading it. I'd been waiting so long for a hummingbird book with photos of the females and the immature birds. In the past, I've had so much trouble looking through art drawings of hummingbirds. Now we have photos of each bird to help with identification in the field.

This book is a must-have for hummingbird enthusiasts! Make sure to read the text too, because tons of fabulous facts and trivia are included. For instance, females of some species sing, and females outnumber the male hummers most of the time, but in one instance a female was killed and a male was seen feeding the babies she'd left behind! How interesting!

This book is very well written. it contains over 400 drawings and 78 color photos, to help in the identification of the mentioned plants. Each entry contains information on habitat, when they flower, a description and the uses. Also conatins any applicable warnings. The line drawings are very accurate and are more than enough, when coupled with the descriptions, to be able to identify just about any plant. But if you have any doubts, check the color photos. Also, at the back of the book, it contains the various types of plants divided up into habitat, and then each habitat divided into what plants can be harvested there during various seasons. This book is a great resource for any survivalist's bookshelf.

If you're like me and you enjoy trying to eat leaves and berries that you find while hiking and wandering about in nature, this is a handy book to own. The Peterson who wrote this book (son of the Peterson of the many, many wildlife guidebooks writer) is also a forest forrager and details some other cool books to own in the Introduction (including Stalking Wild Asparagus..excellent). I searched for a while to find a guide that would not only easily ID edible berries, roots and leaves..but also give recipe-like tips on how to prepare said roots and leaves..and they do here. Who knew, for example, that one could make a cool and refreshing beverage from staghorn sumac? Crafty! Guide is sub-divided into several search methods: color, plant-type (berry, leaf) and includes many color plates along with ink drawings to help to be sure that Amanita spp. mushroom you're eating won't cause you trouble later! And, the final great feature of the Peterson guides is that the front and back covers are tough so that you can make your copy go camping with you over many moons and you won't wear out your book. Nice!

I teach wild edible plants and this is the best identification book for the Eastern and Centeral states that I have found. It has very good line drawings and some good color pictures in a section by themselves. It has graphig symbols showing how each plant can be used.

When I ordered this guide, I was expecting a format that was similar to the other Petersen bird guides. Unfortunately, this book is nowhere near as well organized. The plates are small, the artwork is not as good, and not all the species are illustrated. The text was also rather thin in life history information. If you are traveling to the Caribbean in winter and aren't up to speed on North American migratory singbirds, you will need to take an Eastern U.S. bird guide with you as well, as the numerous migrants that comprise the wintertime fauna are merely mentioned. I managed to identify most birds that I saw while using this guide, but it was a frustrating process.

Yea, The book could definently use some improvements, but overall the pictures did depict the birds pretty well. The only species illustrated {in color} are those endemic ONLY to the Carib islands. Any birds that are seen in the continental US are only given black and white drawings, and small descriptions. So a field guide and familiarity to eastern migratory birds are a plus! I am VERY dissapointed with the quality of the pages in the book. After a week in the Islands, mine looks worse than any of my regular guides! Bring a water-proof sleeve or something, because it's going to get wet! Not a bad book though, I had a lot of fun, and pretty much every bird you see tends to be a new species! Have fun!

Hard core 007 afficianados will notice a pile of 007 in-jokes that are scattered throught the latest Bond film, "Die Another Day". Among them: While in a Cuban office, Pierce Brosnan casually picks up a first edition of this book, which, as others have noted, is where Ian Fleming came up with 007's name. Better than available alternatives I suppose ("My name is Audobon - - John James Audobon..."