Guide to Birding Hot Spots of the United States

Birders from this side of the pond often visit the United States, but although key sites near the classic holiday resorts are frequently well documented, many others do not feature so prominently on the ecotourist’s radar.

For an overview of a good range of these, you could do a lot worse than this National Geographic guide. The Nearctic equivalent of Where to Watch Birds in Europe, it covers a total of more than 500 hot-spots in 13 regions across the US. Each region has a small-scale colour ‘road map’ and there are also very basic outline maps for each state, but finer visual detail is lacking, so it’s down to the text to provide key local information.

This it generally does well, with sufficiently detailed directions to guide you to each location, and facilities summarised for each using icons, with web addresses and contact telephone numbers also given. Key target bird species are also summarised, but with so many sites squeezed into just 320 pages, further detailed ‘gen’ such as that provided by the American Birding Association’s state and area guides will usually be needed.

Nonetheless, as an overview to the birding potential of your next US holiday, this is a very useful introduction.

For a wide range of birding books, some at excellent discount prices, please take a look at the Birdwatch Bookshop.

Tech spec

• Guide to Birding Hot Spots of the United States by Mel White with Paul Lehman (National Geographic, Washington DC, 2006)
• 320 pages, numerous photographs and illustrations, 61 maps
• ISBN 9780792254836. Pbk, £12.99