I collect field guides and I’m always looking to add to my collection. Does anyone have any field guide recommendations (for anything)?

Nature Talk
1

I really like collecting field guides to random things, partially for practical use and partially just for entertainment, depending on the subject.

I don’t really mind what region/continent they’re for because I enjoy learning about species from all over the world. I live in the southeastern United States, though, so field guides for that area or just North America in general are the most helpful for practical purposes.

Below is a list of some of the field guides I own. I know the Audubon ones are pretty widely hated, but I inherited all of those from my grandma and it’s the series that got me interested in field guides in the first place. I mostly have bird-related field guides, including a couple international Princeton ones that aren’t listed here, but I’m pretty lacking in other categories.

Does anyone have any field guide recommendations? I really don’t care what they’re for. Just tell me your favorite field guide and I’ll probably be interested as long as it’s decently written and informative :) I’m especially interested in field guides about habitats/natural communities, salamanders, and plants, but really I’m interested in everything nature-related!

Field guides I already own:

Birds

  • National Wildlife Federation Field Guide to Birds of North America
  • Audubon Society Encyclopedia of North American Birds
  • Audubon Society Field Guide to Birds - Eastern

Mammals

  • Audubon Society Field Guide to Mammals

Herps

  • Salamanders of the Eastern United States

Insects

  • Audubon Society Field Guide to Butterflies

Plants and Fungi

  • Audubon Society Field Guide to Wildflowers
  • Audubon Society Field Guide to Mushrooms

Random

  • Collins Field Guide to National Parks of East Africa
2

100 Edible Mushrooms by Michael Kuo

Obviously not comprehensive, but it’s an educational and highly entertaining (if you like mushrooms) read. The sort of book that will make it easier to use more technical and expansive guides later. I especially like to recommend it to beginner foragers as sort of a “First learn not to poison yourself!”

Nests, Eggs, and Nestlings of North American Birds by Paul J. Baicich and Colin J. O. Harrison. Princeton Field Guides

Contains lots of additional information on nesting behavior, beyond how to identify the young. Has answered almost any question I’ve ever had about nesting birds!

I have too many field guides to mention, but those two stand out as really unique and useful.

3

I know the Audubon ones are pretty widely hated

Never heard of then before. So why are they “widely hated”?

4

Mushrooms Demystified by David Arora and Mushrooms of Cascadia by Noah Siegel and Christian Schwarz

5

Thought I was the only one doing this. I travel a lot, so mine has been reduced to e-books ( a bit of trouble finding out of print guides there, but all in time).

Here is my main African List:

Animals:

  • Tortoises, Terrapins and Turtles of Africa;
  • Chameleons of Southern Africa;
  • Field Guide to East African Reptiles;
  • Kingdon Field Guide to African Mammals;
  • The Mammals of the Southern African Subregion;
  • Butterflies of South Africa;
  • Field Guide to the Insects of South Africa;
  • First Field Guide to Spiders & Scorpions of Southern Africa

Aquatic

  • Two Oceans - A Guide to the Marine Life of Southern Africa;
  • Freshwater life - a Field Guide to the Plants and Animals of Southern Africa;
  • A Complete Guide to the Freshwater Fishes of Southern Africa;
  • A Guide to the Common Sea Fishes of Southern Africa;

Birds

  • Sasol Birds of Southern Africa

Plants

  • Aquatic and Wetland Plants of Southern Africa;
  • Identification Guide to Southern African Grasses_ An Identification Manual with Keys, Descriptions and Distribution;
  • Aloes in Southern Africa;
  • Adromischus
  • Illustrated Handbook of Succulent Plants - Crassulaceae;
  • Euphorbia in Southern Africa Vols 1 & 2
  • Field Guide to Fynbos;
  • The Colour Encyclopedia of Cape Bulbs;
  • Baobas of the World;
  • Field Guide to the Trees of Southern Africa

Trouble with collecting is I almost never have the time to properly read them (that would probably require a lifetime of study anyway). Down south the Sasol guides are a good place to start and that bird guide is a gem. Still lacking a few (hyacinth spp is one and a decent Southern African sea shell and fungi guide). I’ll probably start some field guides for the Northern Hemisphere just out of sheer curiosity some time or the other.

And for a pure love of nature, try to get a copy of Eugene Marais’s biography or one of his two best known books - The Soul of the White Ant and The Soul of the Ape - I view them as field guides to being a true naturalist before there was iNat.

6

I’m a big fan of the Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America, the National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America Second Edition, and the Peterson Field Guide to Birds of Eastern and Central North America

7

It used to be that PDFs of Weakley’s Flora of the South Eastern US and precursors were directly available. You now have to request a PDF.

Flora of the Southeastern US

8

We actually have an ongoing discussion about this exact thing right here:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/current-or-general-favorite-field-guides/

The thread has 153 replies, and it’s still open! You might want to take a look at what’s been said, and share your thoughts there.

9

Great question. It really depends on how technical you want to get (I’m not sure what your level of experience is with all these groups). In general, the narrower the topic covered, the better/more accurate the guide will be. I would caution against putting much stock in many of the Audubon society guides, for example. The guides for stuff like birds and mammals are great, but the ones for wildflowers and mushrooms will be of limited use. The main reason for this is that there are ~6,500 mammal species and ~11,000 bird species globally. For flowering plants, that number is at least 350,000. You can cover every single US bird species in a single book; you cannot do the same for plants. The number of insect species is far greater (>400,000 species of beetles alone globally). For fungi, the number is not known, but >100,000 species are described (and it’s pretty common to encounter undescribed ones).

Here are some guides/resources I’d recommend:

Flora of the Southeastern United States covers your area and is totally free to access. Some of the taxa it covers are quite complicated, while others are much easier to understand. It also gives brief morphological and habitat descriptions for every species it covers.

“Common Bees of Eastern North America” by Carril & Wilson is super useful and will get you to genus for basically every bee you encounter. You will be able to identify many to species using this book, and many of the ones you can’t are separated by characteristics that are difficult to see without a dissecting scope.

“Mushrooms Demystified” by David Arora is the most informative book on North American fungi I have found. You can access it for free at the link I provided.

“Leafminers of North America” by Charley Eiseman is the best independently produced guide I have ever seen. You can get a pdf of the first edition for $5.

“Urban Lichens: A Field Guide for Northeastern North America” by Allen et al. does not technically cover your area but I imagine you could still get a lot use out of it. It explains lichens in a way that is digestible to the layman, which I have not seen any other resource do.

“The Sibley Guide to Birds (Second Edition)” by David Allen Sibley is my go to for birding. It is the most detailed and comprehensive field guide to the birds of the US and Canada (at least that I’m aware of).

Some guides for outside of your area:

“Field Guide to Northeastern Longhorned Beetles (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae)” by Douglas Yanega is my favorite hidden gem in terms of field guides. To me, this is the gold standard of how insect field guides should be. It’s free to access at the link I provided.

“Field Guide to the Flower Flies of Northeastern North America” by Skevington et al. covers every syrphid speices that occurs in the Northeast, Midwest, and Northeast parts of Canada. It includes detailed photos for every species. What more could you want?

“Carex of Illinois and Surrounding States: The Oval Sedges” by Murphy et al. somehow manages to make Carex relatively easy to understand, which I didn’t think was possible. Also, one of the authors is an avid iNat user (@sedge).

Finally, some self promotion:

I recently published “Persicaria of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana: A Visual Key” and am updating it regularly. It’s totally free to use and I love getting feedback.

10

The main problem people (myself included) have with these books is they claim to cover an impossible topic. There are 100,000+ insect species in the US. The National Audubon Society’s Field Guide to Insects and Spiders covers 550 species. It does not do a good job explaining the nuance of identifying insects; instead you just find the picture that most closely matches what you’re looking at. Inevitably, this very often leads people to the wrong ID. Also, many of these books group insects in a very confusing way. In the Audubon guide, the have a section for praying mantids and stick insects. They include water scorpions in this group simply because they are kind of shaped like stick insects, even though they are true bugs. They have a separate section for true bugs which water scorpions are not included in. They include moths like this one in the wasp section, spiders like this one in the ant section, include certain true bugs in the beetle section, etc.

I have not used the Kaufman guide personally. From what I have seen, it is better than some similar guides because it stresses that it is a guide for amateurs and discourages people to jump to a species ID based on similarities to a picture. That said, I do still encounter people that do just that. If you are just interested in the basics of common insects it’s probably not a bad buy, but you should not try to use it for species level IDs.

11

I could fill a book with names, lol, and even just from the ones I’ve collected over the years/been gifted. My personal favorites are this large 50-year anniversary set signed by RTP and included with special addition stickers. I could take about ten photos to fit them all, but here is an idea.

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The FloraQuest apps from UNC Chapel Hill Herbarium. Currently only available for select areas of the Southeast but they are developing more. It’s great for field identification with a dichotomous key, a graphic key, photos and a slide out ruler. Works offline so it’s field ready.

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his previous field guide is great as well:

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Big fan of The Social Wasps of North America !!

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What about one on weeds?

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PRINCETON FIELD GUIDE Caterpillars of Eastern North America By David L. Wagner was recommended to me by a local naturalist. It not only has photos of variants of caterpillars but also details host plants and interesting facts and behaviors. https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691121444/caterpillars-of-eastern-north-america

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Lichens of the North Woods By Joe Walewski

A field guide to 111 northern lichens

Fascinating look into lichens, some of which can live as long as trees but grow much more slowly!

https://www.kollathstensaas.com/book.php?bookID=6

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PETERSON FIELD GUIDES
Eastern Forests
A field guide to birds, mammals, trees, flowers, and more
By John Kricher/Gordon Morrison

more about identifying ecosystems than individual species—fascinating discussion of relationships

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i picked up this really cool field guide in akagera nat park in rwanda, it’s a pretty small field guide and there are SO many insects but it’s got great coverage of a lot of insects we saw, especially the showy ones

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I’ve mostly seen people complaining about them when I look up field guide suggestions. A lot of people don’t like them because they only use one photo for each species, and some of the photos aren’t great. Most people seem to prefer multiple photos with multiple angles for easier identification, or drawings instead of photos.

I personally don’t really have an issue with them, but I can understand why some people do. They contain good information, just not always great visual content.