National Geographic: A Field Guide to the Birds of the United States and Canada

Book by Ted Floyd 
“All 1,155 species. with birds of Hawaii, all-new text and maps, new and expanded art”.  8th edition.  2025.  591 pages.  flexbound.  US $32.99.  Canada $44.00.

Highly recommended, but please note: the major changes in authorship, the generation of maps, the addition of a glossary, the more voluminous text, and the inclusion of Hawaiian birds, these explained in detail below.

AUTHORSHIP.  In eds. 1-7 John L. Dunn (and sometimes Jonathan Alderfer in addition, or Rick Blom) is the main author.  In this ed. 8 Ted Floyd is now THE author.  In some earlier editions NG would not show the authors’ names, or certain important bibliographic information such as the publication date on the title page.  Instead these were squirreled away somewhere in back as on the last page or on the verso of the title page.  If I were an author this would rankle me.  But in eds. 5-8 authors have their rightful attribution right on the title page.

MAPS in most field guides are a bit too small, postage stamp-sized, c. 1” X 1” in Geo guides editions 1-4, but somewhat larger in eds. 5-8, and they show state and provincial boundaries.  A welcome change are the maps in the Peterson guides to all of North America, eds. 1-2, 2008 & 2020, which have 2.0” X 2.5” maps, although, as various authors clearly state, such maps are suggestive and generalized, and one should not accept the ranges indicated as completely literal.  There will be of course gaps in the shown distribution because of habitat and elevation vagaries.

Paul Lehman served as the excellent principal map consultant for eds. 1-7.  Those in ed. 8 are based on eBird reports.  Too often some guides will display a very local bird’s range superimposed on a space-wasteful entire map of North America.  The geo guide does a fine job of just showing the local range of birds such as limpkin and the prairie chickens.  The maps are also “generous” showing the range, if any, of birds in peripheral areas that are not in North America, such as the West Indies, Mexico, Siberia, and/or Greenland.  This w/o enlarging the map from “just” showing its N. American range.

The maps do not show that some species are quite frequent but extralimital, such as, on the East coast, for example, say, western kingbird,  Swainson’s hawk, ash-throated flycatcher, long-billed curlew, Townsend’s warbler, cave swallow, Say’s phoebe, et al., but this IS explained in the text.  The 2 big Sibley guides do attempt to show such common vagrancy.

DIMENSIONS.  Eds. 1-5 are all c. 5” X 8” X 1”,  with pagination of 464 pages (eds. 1-2) or 480 (eds. 3-4).  Subsequent eds. increase in size so that ed. 8 is now 6” X 9” X 1” and pagination now is up to 591 pages for eds. 7 & 8.  Traditionally field guides skimp on text detail, that is often minimal.  Ed. 8 has a beefier text, full of good detail.  But the size print will be challenging to read for some and the binding is rather tight so that the right hand part of the text verges onto the inside of the binding crease.  However, the book opens nicely and stays open, exposing all without one having to hold it down or place weights so that it opens wide.

ARTISTS.  There has been criticism that the paintings are uneven.  Well, with 21 artists, OF COURSE they are.  But they are all pretty darn good.  However, the upperparts of the eastern kingbird in life are darker than as shown here, and there is no representation of juveniles that have conspicuous buffy-white edgings to the trailing edge the feathers on their upperparts and wings, VERY DIFFERENT THAN IN ADULTS.  But the 8th ed. does a fine job of otherwise showing the various morphs: by sex, age, or otherwise, often even by local or subspecific variations.

It is interesting that of the 13 artists contributing to the 1st.ed, 12 are still represented among the 21 in the present 8th ed.  When he lived on the E. Shore of MD in the 1980s I used to know one of them, Jon Janosik, who was to be one of just 3 artists for the 1st/ed.  But he failed to meet deadlines so others were brought on board.

Some earlier eds., notably 1st - 5th eds., list the artists and then the species they have painted.  It is nice to be able to, say, find Killlian Mullarney’s name and then right underneath the species he has done.  But in eds. 6- 8 this information, though there, is sort of concealed but given in several EXTREMELY dense pages organized by page sequence and phylogenetic order.

EDITION ENHANCEMENTS began with the 5th ed.: AOU & ABA checklist differences.  Greenland & Bermuda vs. North America.  6th ed.: those also plus separate accidental and extinct species treatments as well as subspecies maps, that are larger and more complex than for the full species.  7th ed.: all those as in the 6th ed.  8th ed.: sections on rare N. American birds, continental extinctions, Hawaiian extinctions, recent checklist updates (splits, name changes) and the glossary.

HAWAII.  This is the first geo guide to include Hawaiiian birds.  They are integrated into the regular text, so are in the correct phylogenetic order along with all the non-Hawaiian birds.

GLOSSARY.  None of the other eds. have one.  This one has 212 terms, more than glossaries in most books, if they even have one.  A nice addition.  Glossaries are not supposed to be comprehensive, as dictionaries are, so it is not a great failing that certain terms are missing, such as austral, boreal, albinistic, melanistic, tundra, taiga, or such informal terms as baypoll or yellowstart (warblers), or cling rail, or wag vs. pumping the tail.

COSMETICS.  The aesthetics of it all.  With eds. 1-7 the covers were dominated by a head and shoulders figure of an adult bald eagle, looking to the right.  Stolid.  Gravitas?  Surely.  With the 8th ed. a full frontal eagle comes swooping down on you, wings spread wide open, legs, feet and talons dangling down, ready to engage.  Whatever celestial draftsmen designed this bird perhaps they were working with extra coffee.  It is a doozy.

The cover art is all showcased adjacent to the familiar, yellow, open frame that is the symbol of Nat. Geog.  IBM is Big Blue.  UPS is Big Brown.  Nat. Geo. is Big Yellow.

THERE USED TO BE KEYS FOR ID.  An extreme example: The Birds of Minnesota by Thomas S. Roberts, M.D. (U. of Minnesota Pr., 1932, 2 volumes w/ total of 1,512 pages), tipping the scales at 12.8 lbs.  Has 90 color plates (by Maj. Allan Brooks, et al.) plus 606 text figures.  A fine example of a sumptuous state monograph, such as is seldom seen anymore.

But 274 pages consist of structured “keys”.  One goes through them step-by-step, seemingly almost endlessly: “if this then go to that, then the next step, then another.”  Was SO clunky a process it is a wonder anyone using it ever stuck with birding.

The keys part of this otherwise splendid, thorough, exhaustive monograph comprises 274 pages, totaling c. 127,600 words, has 122 text figures.  And countless 1000s of records are listed and analyzed plus so many more as banding recovery results.  But … extraordinarily clunky ID by key was frequently how one IDd at the time.

Then Ludlow Griscom and his disciple Roger Tory Peterson knew you didn’t have to shoot the bird or go through an excruciating keys process in order to ID it.  Peterson’s groundbreaking, revolutionary guide, in 1934, changed all this, a brilliant, effective simplification of the ID process, although hampered somewhat by its focus on subspecies.

AND NOW, and for the past few decades, we live in the golden age of field guides … and bird books in general.