New North American Photographic Guides by Sterry and Small

[Grant]

Paul Sterry and Brian E. Small have produced new field guides for Eastern and Western North America. The photos and layout combine to make these probably the most visually attractive field guides that I've seen. But for one thing, they would have been my pick as the best NA photo guide, and one of the best for the region period.

Here's the full review:

Review of Birds of Eastern North America / Birds of Western North America: A Photographic Guide (http://www.birderslibrary.com/reviews/books/field/birds_north_america_photographic_guide.htm)

[J. Moore]

Great review as always Grant. Sounds like it would be a good complement to a guide with paintings, but not as a stand alone guide, because of the omissions and uncertain coverage.

I wonder though whether DVDs/CDs will give such guides more of a run for their money at some point--as a home reference anyway. A DVD has the advantage of being able to display a lot more photos, and at a larger size. A large number of photos, displaying multiple individuals in multiple plumages/aspects is what I really want from a photo guide. I have a fairly old version of the Thayer CD ROM for NA birds, but it still needs more photos, and to have the photos be displayed in thumbnail format for each species, to be the ideal photo guide, in my opinion.

Best,
Jim

[Grant]

Thanks, Jim!

I think there may be a market for a disc-based ID guide. It could have all the photos, like you mentioned, but also video (there is a Audubon VideoGuide (http://www.birderslibrary.com/reviews/dvd/audubon_video_guide.htm), but it is now woefully out of date and outclassed by what you can get online). After thinking about it a second, I bet a clever producer could create an amazing interactive field guide using blu-ray. You could even have three-dimensional models, based on either photos or artwork, that you could zoom in on and move around. It could give you any view of a bird that you could ever want. Of course, I have no idea of the effort that would be required to make that, but it is at least possible with the technology as it exists today.

So I am very curious as to how birding references will look in the future. I love technology (I did major in computer science, after all), but I still love a good physical bird book.