The Stokes Field Guide to Bird Songs

Eastern and Western Box Set

By: Donald Stokes, Lillian Q. Stokes, Lang Elliot, Kevin Colver

Narrated by: Donald Stokes, Lillian Q. Stokes, Lang Elliot, Kevin Colver

Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's summary

An incredible 923 species from all of North America are included in this marvelous audio companion to the best-selling Stokes Field Guides.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

©2010 Donald Stokes (P)2010 Hachette

Chapters are Now Titled by Species

Most of the negative reviews are because the chapters originally weren't titled by species and they weren't indexed to match the PDF. That has been fixed.

From the phone app you can just click on "Chapters" and scroll to the species of interest. They're organized with Eastern Species first and then Western and within that by bird type (i.e. shorebirds, owls, warblers, etc). It can be a little tedious to scroll through 100's of species, but you can also make your own bookmarks for favorite sections or species so you can jump directly to them.

The app would be even better if the chapters were searchable. I've seen lots of improvements in the app, so maybe this is coming soon. If you're listening from a PC you can open the chapters section while listening and press "Ctl+F" to search for a species.

The PDF is available on the phone app (click the 3 dots in the upper right while listening) or from your Audible library online. Of course, the PDF is easy to search on a PC with "Ctrl + F." There may be a way to search the PDF on a phone, but I wasn't able to do it readily on iOS.

The PDF gives a description of each call.

Example:
"3. Pied-billed Grebe
• Breeding call of the male is a long
series of resonant, throaty notes,
“kuk-kuk-cow-cow-cowp-cowp-cowp,”
followed by soft moans and grunts
• Chatter call is a rapid series of “kek”
notes (example of chatter given
simultaneously by pair)
• In territorial duet, given by pairs early
in breeding season, female’s notes
are higher in pitch than male’s"

The audio quality is very clean and the narration of the species name is soothing. There is no background wind or "white noise" like I've heard on other recordings. The volume level is consistent across the recording. I'm very happy with this title. It's pleasant enough to listen to as I'm falling asleep or to de-stress on my commute.

Background Birds an Issue

Like I stated for the Stokes Guide to Eastern Bird calls, the background, different, bird calls are an issue for novice birders such as myself.
There are some that are about as loud as the target species.

Everything else is great!

So many accurate recordings.

I love this book for all of the different recordings of birds that are available. I can’t wait to start trying to identify birds that I hear out in the real world. This book is so much fun. I’m glad I got it.

NEEDS TRACK TITLES!

Would you try another book from the authors and/or the narrators?

Perhaps...

What do you think your next listen will be?

a literary novel, I hope.

What does the narrators bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

This isn't really a story- just bird songs, but if you purchased the CD set, you would get all of the same sounds and information.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

Well, I did get to listen to the birds...

Any additional comments?

I would recommend that you purchase the book on the CD boxed set. That's what I will have to do. Then, once it is imported into iTunes, I'll be able to identify each bird track and play only that one. Since this comes in a different format, it does not import to iTunes as tracks, but chapters...with no track titles. So, it would be a nightmare to try to find one bird individually. I had really hoped that this would be a good deal, but for my purpose, it's useless.

Not very good.

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

I was hoping this would be like Peterson's Birding By Ear series, but it was nearly as detailed.

Useless

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

The recordings in this book would be fantastic, if there were any way to find the one you're looking for! Individual tracks within the book are not labeled in any way, so it's impossible to locate and listen to the recording of a specific bird. In addition, the tracks on the Audible recording are cut differently than the tracks listed on the PDF booklet that comes with them, so you won't find any help there either. Please, Audible, if you are going to offer reference material at all, do the work to make it auseful.