* Make sure your field guide is light enough to carry for several hours along with a bottle of water and your binoculars.
* Field guides with photographs may not be as helpful as hand-illustrated ones.
** While photographs will show the bird in a natural setting, this is not always to your advantage.
** Shadows, unusual angles, lighting, and other factors may make some photographs difficult to use.
** Books illustrated with photographs may also not show all variations of plumage.
* Good, update maps of where birds are located at different times of the year are extremely helpful.
*If you are planning a trip to an area which you have never visited, consider investing in a comprehensive guide to the birds of the area.
**Most "basic" books or general guides to wildlife will only have a handful of the most commonly seen species. This is especially true when visiting tropical areas, where there are so many species that the complete guides are somewhat cumbersome.
**Unless you really can't afford it, buy the biggest guide you can find. You will not be sorry, especially if you identify something a little out of the ordinary that wasn't in the basic guide.
**If weight is really an issue, you can always cut the book apart, taking only the illustrations with you in the field (frequently they are all grouped together as a set of plates in the center) and keeping the notes for reading in your hotel room/base camp later on.
North America
* North America
* Eastern North America
* Western North America
* Mexico
*If you decide to get a field guide by state, keep in mind that it may only contain the birds most commonly sighted in that state. It will be useful in the field, but you might still want a complete reference like the Sibley Guide to Birds sitting at home.
**The exceptions to this are Alaska and Hawaii. If you are planning a trip to one of these states, it is worth the investment to pick up a special state field guide. Most North American field guides do not cover any Hawaiian birds and some do not cover birds that live as far north as Alaska.
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