When you're interested in nature, as I am, you often spend a lot of time out in it, on nature walks and suchlike. When you do, you usually want some kind of reference to tell you what it is you're seeing. That was the idea behind Roger Tory Peterson's Field Guide Series, and where Peterson went others followed. Now, my library includes a whole shelf of field guides.
| Peterson Field Guides | NAS Field Guides | Other field guides |
The Peterson Field Guide Series
My favorite field guides, and the ones I use most often, are the Peterson Field Guide Series. While others put out better individual guides on one topic or another, I think the Peterson guides are in general the best there are. Roger Tory Peterson basically invented the field guide as a type with his FIELD GUIDE TO THE BIRDS, first published in 1934. He used painted portraits of the birds matched with short descriptions of them, with both the descriptions and the portraits pointing out two or three distinctive "fieldmarks" that distinguished that specific bird species from all other similar birds. This was so useful that it became the signature of all the Peterson Field Guides: the description with fieldmarks in italics, matched with the painting which had arrows pointing out the fieldmarks.
Note: "Field bound" means the book's cover is made of a material that's tougher and more durable than a normal paperback cover, while being more flexible than a normal hard cover, thus providing the best features of both.
ANIMAL TRACKS
Murie, Olaus J.
c.1974, Houghton Mifflin
ISBN: 0-395-18323-5
Peterson's Field Guide to animal tracks, scats, and other field signs. Focuses on mammals, with a little information on birds, reptiles, and other animals.
BIRDS EAST OF THE ROCKIES
Peterson, Roger Tory
c.2002, Houghton Mifflin
ISBN: 0-395-36164-8
A Field Guide to the Birds was the very first Peterson field guide, and even today it's considered the Peterson series's "signature" guide. When you say "bird guide," this is the first one that most birders think of, even if they don't always use it. In my opinion, this is the best bird guide ever published for eastern North America. Every known native species is illustrated, as well as a number of significant subspecies and a number of accidentals. The paintings are excellent and show every species well. It's rare that I can't identify a bird from this guide's descriptions and illustrations, and usually it's because the lighting was bad and I couldn't really get a good look at the bird. If you're interested in getting into birding, then I think this is the best guide to start with. The most recent edition, published in 2002, substantially revised and improved the format and the text. It's available in both field-bound and conventional hardcover versions.
GEOLOGY OF EASTERN NORTH AMERICA
Roberts, David C.
c.1996, Houghton Mifflin
ISBN: 0-395-66325-3
A field guide to major geological formations of eastern and central North America, both the United States and Canada. This is definitely one of the more esoteric entries in the Peterson's series -- large-scale geology just isn't as generally interesting a topic as birds or mammals or wildflowers are.
MAMMALS OF NORTH AMERICA
Burt and Grossenheider
c.1980, Houghton Mifflin
ISBN: 0-395-24084-0
Peterson's Field Guide to the mammals of North America. Field-bound version. Includes names, descriptions, paintings or drawings, illustrations of tracks, and information on how to identify bones and skulls. Every significant mammal species in North America is covered; this isn't limited to just one part of the continent as Peterson's field guides to birds and wildflowers do.
MEDICINAL PLANTS OF EASTERN/CENTRAL NORTH AMERICA
Foster and Duke
c.1990, Houghton Mifflin
ISBN: 0-395-46722-5
A field guide that deals specifically with medicinal plants native to eastern and central North America. It may not appear to be much practical use these days, but it's fascinating anyway, simply to read about all the different types of medicines one can find in ordinary plants.
REPTILES AND AMPHIBIANS OF EASTERN NORTH AMERICA
Conant and Collins
c.1991, Houghton Mifflin
ISBN: 0-395-58389-6
Peterson's Field Guide to reptiles and amphibians of eastern and central North America. Very thick, with very good illustrations. Includes frogs, toads, salamanders, snakes, lizards, turtles, tortoises, and any other reptile or amphibian you're likely to find in the eastern half of North America.
REPTILES AND AMPHIBIANS (Western Region), A FIELD GUIDE TO
Stebbins, Robert C.
c.1985, Houghton Mifflin
ISBN: 0-395-38253-X
The counterpart to REPTILES AND AMPHIBIANS OF EASTERN NORTH AMERICA, this guide deals with the reptiles and amphibians to be found in the western half of the continent.
STARS AND PLANETS
Menzel and Pasachoff
c.1990, Houghton Mifflin
ISBN: 0-395-34835-8
Peterson's Field Guide to stars and planets, for casual starwatchers and amateur astronomers. Field-bound version.
WESTERN BIRDS
Peterson, Roger Tory
c.1990, Houghton Mifflin
ISBN: 0-395-51424-X
The counterpart to BIRDS OF EASTERN NORTH AMERICA, this guide deals with all the bird species one might find west of the Mississippi River. There's a large area of overlap with the region treated by BIRDS OF EASTERN NORTH AMERICA.
WILDFLOWERS OF NORTH AMERICA
Peterson/McKenny
c.1968, Houghton Mifflin
ISBN: 0-395-18325-1
Peterson's Field Guide Series guide to wildflowers of eastern and central North America. Excludes the Deep South and everything west of the Plains. Field-bound version. This is one of very few Peterson guides that I don't consider better than any of the alternatives. Black and white drawings are simply not much help in identifying colorful wildflowers, and neither is the "go through page by page until you find something that looks right" format.
National Audubon Society Field Guides
I also have several guides from the Audubon Society's field guide series. Audubon guides use photographs instead of drawings or paintings for illustrations. The photographs are helpful in some cases, such as wildflowers, because a photo is full-color and puts the flower in its proper environment. In other cases, such as birds, the photos aren't nearly as good as paintings. However, the Audubon guides' layout suffers from one major flaw: the photographs and descriptions are in separate sections, so you have to flip back and forth between them. This makes these more useful as references, where you can look up a species in the index and go directly to its photo and text. They are not very good as actual field guides, when you're trying to identify a bird or flower or something that you don't know the name for. In a few cases I have both the Audubon and Peterson guides to the same subject; in others, I have the Audubon guide because there's no matching Peterson guide or because the photos are more useful than the drawings.
NORTH AMERICAN FISHES, WHALES, AND DOLPHINS
c.1983, Alfred A. Knopf
ISBN: 0-394-53405-0
Audubon Society field guide to North America's freshwater and saltwater fishes, whales, and dolphins. Since I moved to the Northeast and spend a lot of time on the coast, I've found this one quite useful.
NORTH AMERICAN FOSSILS
Thompson, Ida
c.1995, Alfred A. Knopf
ISBN: 0-394-52412-8
Audubon Society's field guide to common North American fossils. This is intended as a general reference, and focuses on the kind of common, generic fossils one is likely to find anywhere. Fossils are grouped by appearance, which is one of the more useful ways to do it. It's a good general reference for general use, but if you want detailed information on a specific area's fossils, then you'll have to look for other sources.
NORTH AMERICAN INSECTS & SPIDERS
Milne, Lorus and Margery
c.1980, Alfred A. Knopf
ISBN: 0-394-50763-0
Audubon Society's field guide to North American insects and spiders. I've found this one very useful as a shelf reference because it covers all the common insects and spiders in a single book. Insects and spiders tend to be similar enough in their coloring that the photos are useful for identification. Also, as far as I've been able to tell, no other field-guide series has a single guide to all insects and spiders.
NORTH AMERICAN MAMMALS
Whitaker, John O.
c.1980, Alfred A. Knopf
ISBN: 0-394-50762-2
The Audubon Society's field guide to mammals of North America. As with the Peterson guide, this covers the entire continent, not just the East.
NORTH AMERICAN TREES
Little, Elbert
c.1980, Alfred A. Knopf
ISBN: 0-394-50760-6
Audubon Society's field guide to trees of eastern North America. As with wildflowers, the photographs in this guide seem to be somewhat more useful in identifying trees than the drawings in the Peterson guide.
NORTH AMERICAN WILDFLOWERS
Niering, William A.
c.1979, Alfred A. Knopf
ISBN: 0-394-50432-1
Audubon Society's field guide to wildflowers of eastern North America. This is one of the few Audubon guides that I think is superior to the competing Peterson guide. Full color photographs are much more helpful for identifying wildflowers than the drawings used in the Peterson wildflower guide, but the clumsy two-section layout is still a problem.
Finally, I have several miscellaneous field guides. Some of these are on specialized subjects. Others I use as supplements or alternates for Peterson or Audubon guides.
BIRDS OF NORTH AMERICA (Golden Field Guides)
Robbins, Bruun, Zim
c.2001, Western Publishing
ISBN: 0-307-33656-5
The bird guide from the Golden Field Guide Series. (Don't confuse these with the small, simple, very old Golden Guides -- the Golden Field Guides are full size books as large and elaborate as Peterson field guides.) Lightweight and durable, with a binding almost as sturdy as Peterson's field binding, this guide has a complete set of information on each included bird: name, capsule description with fieldmarks, and range map on the left hand page, and a good painting on the right hand page. In some cases, a sonagram of the bird's most common song or call is included. Personally, I put this guide a feather ahead of the Peterson bird guide for a couple of reasons: I like the artwork a little bit better, it's slightly thinner and lighter, and it has all the information on each bird in one place. I've had a copy for many years; a new edition was published in 2001, and I immediately bought a copy to replace the older one. When I went to the Cascades Range in 2002, this is the guide I took along.
BIRDS OF NORTH AMERICA, A FIELD GUIDE TO
c.1983, National Geographic Society
ISBN: 0-87044-507-3
National Geographic's field guide to birds. It has good artwork, range maps, and text descriptions of the birds listed. Its only major drawback is that it's noticeably larger than any of the other bird guides I have, so it's a bit harder to carry conveniently. I think it makes a good in-the-car guide, but not a good carry-in-the-field guide. My copy of this is the 3rd edition. A 4th edition was published in 2002.
McCLANE'S FIELD GUIDE TO FRESHWATER FISHES OF NORTH AMERICA
McClane, A. J.
c.1978, Holt, Rinehart, & Winston
ISBN: 0-03-021116-6
Exactly what the title says: a guide to freshwater fishes of North America. Very useful for, say, a beginning fisherman who is curious to identify an unusual or non-commercial fish he's caught.
McCLANE'S FIELD GUIDE TO SALTWATER FISHES OF NORTH AMERICA
McClane, A. J.
c.1978, Henry Holt & Company
ISBN: 0-8050-0733-4
Again, the title pretty much says it all: this is a guide to the common saltwater fishes of North America. It covers the common fishes of all three coasts: East, West, and Gulf of Mexico.
A FIELD GUIDE TO NORTH ATLANTIC WILDLIFE: Marine Mammals, Seabirds, Fish, and Other Sea Life
Noble Proctor and Patrick Lynch
c. 2005, Yale University Press
ISBN: 0-300-10658-0
An indispensable guide for anyone who spends time in the pelagic zone off the East Coast of the United States, and wants to be able to identify the living things to be found there. This guide covers the most common organisms found in the offshore waters off the East Coast: plants, jellyfishes, pelagic crustaceans, pelagic fishes, seabirds, seals, dolphins, and whales. The illustrations are adequate, and the text and range maps are very useful.
THE SIBLEY GUIDE TO BIRDS
Sibley, David Allen
c. 2000, Chanticleer Press
ISBN: 0-679-45122-6
The is the single finest bird guide currently available. Much larger and more elaborate than a field guide, the Sibley Guide is a textbook-sized reference work that's meant to sit on your desk or in your car. Its illustrations show every major plumage variation of every species of bird found in North America.
A FIELD GUIDE TO WETLANDS
Niering, William
c.1985, Alfred A. Knopf
ISBN: 0-394-73147-6
A complete field guide to wetlands wildlife, both plants and animals. A good at-home reference, but I think it's a little too large to be easily carried.
