[.ca] Raptors of Eastern North America: The Wheeler Guides (ISBN 0691134766)

The Photographs- WOW!!:
What an achievement! For the first time, someone has produced a field guide using photographs that is as useful/helpful as one with paintings. Through painstaking effort, and clearly top-quality equipment, Brian Wheeler has overcome the vagaries of bird photography (varied lighting, poor focus, etc.) to produce images for each species that are,by themselves, worth the price of the book. And, Wheeler's photographs are comprehensive for each species,and associated subspecies, ranging from 9 pictures for Short-tailed Hawk up to 82 for Red-tailed! A novice or veteran birder could spend hours poring over the photos, soaking up the fine details. Along with the pictures, Wheeler has included exhaustive descriptive text (plumage, behavior, range, habitat, etc.) for each subspecies. He has also provided full-page maps with an innovative addition of major city names so the reader can "get their bearings". All these things make this book (and its western counterpart) the crowning bird reference achievement since the first Peterson guide.

Nice addition to bird guide library:
Lots of detailed information on plumage and habits of each species. Very nice photo collection showing several id traits to look for. My complaint is not with the content, but with the publisher. You have to really bend the pages back to read the text at the center of the book, so I fear the binding may wear out prematurely...wish they had left a bigger margin around the text. Excellent value if you buy at chapters.indigo.ca for $19.76 instead of amazon.ca at $30.83, although amazon.ca does reimburse the difference in price if you submit a "guaranteed low price" request. Thanks amazon.ca, but why charge so much in the first place?

A MUST for every falconer or bander.:
This book belongs in every falconer's bag. A book in a class by itself. The standard by which every future book on guides to raptors, will be judged.