The Natural History of Foster City, California
by James K. Sayre
a draft manuscript
12 May 2005
Chapter 28: Natural History Reading Reference Guides
There are a number of excellent natural history guidebooks written for use in the Bay Area:
Bird Guides:
Peterson, Roger Tory, Western Birds - Peterson Field Guide, 1990. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, $16.95, paperback, 432 pages; an excellent guide with bird paintings by Roger Tory Peterson, undoubtedly the best bird painter in America today, also featuring his field mark identification system and colored range maps in the back of the book by his wife, Virginia Marie Peterson.
Robbins, Chandler S., Bruun, Bertel, and Zim, Herbert S., Birds of North America - a Guide to Field Identification, 1966. New York: Golden Press, $17.95, paperback 360 pages, another excellent guide featuring bird paintings by Arthur Singer and colored range maps on the same pages with the individual bird species. It could be a slight distraction to have eastern species mixed in with western birds.
Udvardy, Miklos D. F., The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds - Western Region, 1977, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, paperback, 852 pages; $18.00. This book features color photographs of birds, a different approach from the above two books. In the author's opinion, bird paintings are still the best method of identifying similar bird species.
General Natural History guidebooks;:
Vessel, Mathew F. and Wong, Herbert H., Natural History of Vacant Lots, 1987. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Williams, John C., and Morn, Howard C., Natural History of Northern California, 1976. Dubuque: Kendell/Hunt Publishing Co.
Williams, John C., and Monroe, Howard C., Natural History of the San Francisco Bay Area, 1970. Berkeley: McCutchen Publishing Corporation.
End.
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