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| Bird Songs: 250 North American Birds in Song | 
 enlarge | Author: Les Beletsky
Creator: Jon L. Dunn
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Category: Book
List Price: $45.00
Buy New: $27.99
You Save: $17.01 (38%)
New (24) Used (12) from $14.50
Avg. Customer Rating:  164 reviews
Sales Rank: 3961
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.8
Dimensions (in): 11 x 10.9 x 1.1
ISBN: 1932855416
Dewey Decimal Number: 598.1594
EAN: 9781932855418
ASIN: 1932855416
Publication Date: September 21, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New. No dust jacket as issued. Audience: General/trade.
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Product Description
Drawing from the collection of the world-renowned Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Bird Songs presents the most notable North American birds including the rediscovered Ivory-billed Woodpecker in a stunning new format. Renowned bird biologist Les Beletsky provides a succinct description of each of the 250 birds profiled, with an emphasis on their distinctive songs. Lavish full-color illustrations accompany each account, while a sleek, built-in digital audio player holds 250 corresponding songs and calls. In his foreword, North American bird expert and distinguished natural historian Jon L. Dunn shares insights gained from a lifetime of passionate study. Complete with the most up-to-date and scientifically accurate information, Bird Songs is the first book to capture the enchantment of these beautiful birds in words, pictures, and song. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, located in Ithaca, New York, is a nonprofit institution focused on birds and whose mission is to interpret and conserve the earth's biological diversity through research. The Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab is the major source of sound recordings of birds for research, education, conservation, the media, and commercial products. Listen here
Trumpeter Swan
Laughing Gull
Eastern Bluebird
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| Customer Reviews: Read 159 more reviews...
 Simply Amazing September 29, 2006
163 out of 166 found this review helpful
Perhaps I am not the best person to review the quality and accuracy of the songs in this book/audio player (I would leave that to Rick Johnson of Osprey Ridge Studios who created the Hearbirds Course on CD available at [..] but as the former publisher of Waite Group Press [..] I must say that this is one of the most innovative and fun to use products to appear in book publishing in a long time.
The way its put together is really creative - the electronic device glued strongly to the back cover is available at all times as you turn the pages. The system is minimalist which is its real charm. - a rocker switch increments an odometer like counter up or down. The number is keyed to the number on the bird page. In the middle of the rocker is a push button that starts the song playing. One more button controls the volume. That's it!
The illustrations are very nice, soft watercolors, unlike the hard edged and brighter drawings found in traditional field guides like those from Peterson and National Geographic. The descriptive text about each bird is short and to the point, my only complaint is that its gray color is not easy to read on older eyes. Yet that is minor compared to the enjoyment I got just turning the pages and pushing the button.
When I was at borders a crowd formed around me as they heard the bird calls - many thought a hawk had been trapped in the building. I highly recommend this book (and the price is right).
 Good coffee table book November 28, 2006
76 out of 87 found this review helpful
I'm a birder, and like to have ALL the birding books. This book has a coolness factor, but definitely something to have, show, and use at home, or give as a gift to another birder. It is too heavy and bulky to take along, and the birds are not organized taxonomically. They are organized by habitat. I also found that there is the 'usual' eastern U.S. skew to the birds that were in the book. So, this is an interesting book that I will add to my birding library. I'm not even sure how much of a research source it will be. I wonder how long it will be before this technology makes it to a usable field guide. That will definitely be a usable item - not just to identify a bird song in the field, but to play the bird song to draw in nearby birds.
What a cool book! November 16, 2006
69 out of 72 found this review helpful
As a (very) amateur birder, I am continually frustrated by hearing birds I can't see and not having a clue as to what that bird might be. This neat book links the description, the drawing AND the sound!
I think it would be an aid to more accomplished birders who try to describe bird calls to others, a joy to children just learning about birds and a help to the avian-challenged rest of us.
 So much potential, so poorly realized January 6, 2007
25 out of 27 found this review helpful
Reviewing "Bird Songs" is a bit like reviewing a talking horse. It's so amazing to hear it talk, one overlooks what it is saying.
The songs are wonderful; accessing them is a travesty.
There are two components to this item, the book and the player. The player is a solid state device glued to the back cover of the book. The 250 bird songs in the player are known to the player only by a reference number (1 to 250), which is shown in the player's LCD window.
To hear a song, one touches the play button once to awaken the device, then, by depressing an up or down key, you scroll to the reference number of the desired song. Pressing Play then plays a recorded snippet of the selected bird's song. In short, to hear a song, one must first know its number, and then one must find it.
And herein lies the first major flaw. It is a royal pain to find the reference number of a song. The book has a miserable index, organized alphabetically by common name, that only gives the page number of a bird. One must then go to the page to find the (different) reference number for the song. There is no simple way to relate page numbers to song numbers. And the index itself is difficult to use, as it is not only organized only by common name, but there is no grouping of similar species, so a Marsh Wren is under M and a Canyon Wren is under C. If you want to look up Loon, better look under C for Common Loon. All in tiny, light type. Arrrgh.
Once one has the reference number, the second flaw becomes obvious. Player scrolling acts much like setting a digital clock, first scrolling slowly, then quickly. The numbers wrap around, so one can get to say, 249, from 1 by going backwards. Thus, theoretically, one should never have to scroll more than 125 numbers. It takes a minimum of 15 seconds to scroll 125 numbers. Be prepared to spend a lot of time fiddling with the scroll buttons.
The book. Well, the pictures are nice. The organization is bizarre, by habitat, and there are no range maps, just vague descriptions. But you aren't buying this item for the book.
The songs themselves are fascinating. The recording of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker is almost worth the price by itself. And, the Amazon price is very reasonable.
A great resource and a great gift December 8, 2006
23 out of 23 found this review helpful
I have been birding for a couple years now and I love it, but it is so confounding to hear a really interesting bird call and not know what on earth it could be. This book does for the ears what a regular field guide does for the eyes, and it helps an enthusiastic novice like me get into birding even more. Not to mention that it's just cool and very easy to use. My only wish is that they would have included more calls in each recording, as often the call in the book is a specialized mating or distress call and not necessarily the one you'd be most likely to hear in the field. But I guess they had to go with what they had, and it is quite amazing to get 250 bird calls in one volume, plus pictures and descriptions. I definitely recommend this book for anyone who loves birds or loves someone else who loves birds.
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