Outstanding resource for birding in our warbler season of migration through the city area. Excellent illustrations and distribution maps. Text is very extensive and the coated pages make the book an "at home" resource rather than riding around in my backpack. ( )

The definitive book to have in your pocket when birding in late spring or autumn.l

The review complaining about a lack of photographs may be misleading to people who don't have the book. Like most field guides, it is not a photographic guide. (Some people prefer photos, many prefer drawings, and this is not the place for that particular discussion.) There is certainly no dearth of *illustrations* -- the plate section shows multiple plumages for every North American breeding species of warblers (even the almost certainly extinct Bachman's), and the plate showing the undertails of all species is invaluable for identifying warblers from the less-than ideal views most of us actually get.

Most of the book, however, is devoted to detailed species accounts, with a few photographs in this section. While this information is a very useful reference, it does make the book unwieldy to use as a true "field guide"; it's more at home on the shelf next to Big Sibley than in your pack with your favorite general field guide.

My solution (in which I'm sure I'm not alone) was to make a color copy of the undertail plates (just two pages) and keep it in my general-purpose field guide, and keep this volume at home as a reference. ( )

A good guide. 650 pages, but suffers from an incredible dearth of photographs. ( )