The Stokes Field Guide to Bird Songs: Eastern and Western Box Set

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

Narrado por: Donald Stokes, Lillian Q. Stokes, Lang Elliot, Kevin Colver

For the first time ever, Eastern and Western Bird Song audio guides from the famed team of Donald and Lillian Stokes will be available in one comprehensive box set with new premium packaging. An incredible 923 species from all of North America are included in this marvelous audio companion to the bestselling Stokes Field Guides. Bonus materials, including PDFs with track listings, precise call and song descriptions, and helpful hints on distinguishing sounds of similar species, as well as a new original piece from the Stokes and more, will be included on these discs. Both Eastern (9781607887836) and Western (9781607887843) Guides will be reissued in new updated packaging as individual titles as well, each priced at $24.98/$29.98 Can.

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.