By: Donald J. Borror

Price: $7.95

 

 

Birds Represented:

Common Crow

Blue Jay

Common Nighthawk

House Sparrow

Northern Bobwhite

Red-Shouldered Hawk

Whip-poor-will

Black-Capped Chickadee

Carolina Chickadee

Eastern Wood Pewee

Eastern Phoebe

Least Flycatcher

Great Crested Flycatcher

Traill's Flycatcher

White-Breasted Nuthatch

Yellow-Shafted Flicker

Chipping Sparrow

Slate-Colored Junco

Swamp Sparrow

Nashville Warbler

Yellowthroat

Carolina Wren

Ovenbird

Kentucky Warbler

Field Sparrow

White-Throated Sparrow

Northern Cardinal

Tufted Titmouse

Eastern Meadowlark

Baltimore Oriole

Grasshopper Sparrow

Blue-Winged Warbler

Black-Throated Green Warbler

Prairie Warbler

Parula Warbler

Cerulean Warbler

American Robin

Rose-Breasted Grosbeak

Summer Tanager

Scarlet Tanager

Red-Eyed Vireo

Warbling Vireo

Purple Finch

Wood Thrush

Rufous-Sided Towhee

Red-Winged Blackbird

Song Sparrow

Hooded Warbler

Yellow Warbler

Chestnut-Sided Vireo

Louisiana Waterthrush

Indigo Bunting

Vesper Sparrow

American Goldfinch

House Wren

Bobolink

Catbird

Brown Thrasher

Northern Mockingbird

 

Positive Points:

 

CD is VERY clear (both bird calls and announcing voice)

Drawings are very well done

Inexpensive

 

Negative Points:

 

No color pictures

If you live in a part of the country where these birds are not native it will be worthless

No location maps or general information about the individual birds

 

General Overview:

I must say that, considering the price of this item, I am VERY impressed with the quality.  The CD clearly displays the songs of 60 common birds.  The announcer speaks the bird name clearly and cincicely before each of the calls.  It also gives a myriad of variations on each call.

 

The book shows black and white line drawings of each bird and gives a bit of information on each of the calls.  The back of the book contains a chart listing where and when each of the calls were recorded.  It also shows a spectrograph for each of the calls though that seems to be relatively unimportant and unnecessary.

 

It should be noted that because there are no color pictures, information on the birds aside from their calls or location maps the book cannot be used as a field guide alone.  In my opinion the book is relatively useless if you own a good color field guide to accompany the CD.  Of course for the price of this set it is of excellent quality and I would highly recommend it to begin bird call identification.

 

Overall Grade:  B+