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 - Bird watcher dreamI recently sent this book to a relative that lives in the south east of Montreal in Quebec. The birds are the same as the ones in Vermont which is only 30 minuts from her home. She was d elighted with the book and the recording. She did comments that the birds songs were the same as heard in her neiborhood, which is Sherbrooke area. I had again look for quite a while and finally found it in Amazon. I am always pleasantly surprise to find this at my friendly Amazon. Thanks Rating:  - A Good Deal for a Lot of Bird SongsThis is a good collection of bird songs. It certainly gives you a lot more for your money than an Identiflier though not as portable. It confirms my past impressions that the Cornell recordings leave a bit to be desired. Many bird songs I find quite uncharacteristic. Catbird, for example. There are many others which I find to be vocalizations quite unlike what I hear in New England (Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut primarily). I also wondered at some of the particular choices included. Great Blue Heron is included; Blackburnian Warbler is not. Vocalizations of the former are hardly needed in the field while those of the latter would be most helpful in it's deciduous forest breeding habitat. In fact, I can't see why to include any shorebirds since these are readily visible in clear shore habitat where identification is made visually rather than by call or song. Still, for the price, it's a good deal. Rating: - Bird's the Word!My father-in-law is an avid bird watcher, counter, and listener (he's a retired biologist). My wife and I bought this book for him because it combined accurate bird calls with pictures and written information. We thought it may be an easy way for him to share his love of birds with his grandchildren, but we also thought it may be too elementary. We were wrong! He has loved the book and shared it with many students of his. This was a great purchase and I highly recommend it as a resource for beginners and "old birds" alike. Rating: - Great Bird songsThis is a wonderful source for a novice such as myself. The sounds are clear and long enough to depict the typical sounds the bird sings. The only other suggestion I would make is to somehow allow the user to page through the sounds to find the sound first, then indicate the bird that makes the sound since that is the typical way we listen. We often don't see the bird, but the sound first. Great product for introducing family to bird sounds. Rating:  - Needs an indexGood bird sounds, but book badly needs an index. There are numbers to press to hear a bird song, but one has to find the page on which the particular bird is discussed to find the "song" reference number. To make things worse, the birds are not arranged alphabetically, but by type of area in which they are found - water, forest, etc. -- which don't correspond to geographic areas. With a few hours effort on the computer, I made a proper alphabetical index with page number and song numbers, that was sorted by song and by page.
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