The good: A lot of birds covered and very easy to use.

The bad: Sound quality is not great. Looks a bit cheap.

I bought this item as a gift for my disabled mother who spends here days looking out the windows at birds in her backyard. She's always looking them up and naming them. Now she can sit in the backyard and identify them by the sounds. She will love this.

I bought this for my gran daughter. It has wonderful pictures and you can also push the button and hear the birds call. It is interesting to see the birds that can now be identified so easily. She adores it and is always going through the book, reading and listening.

For birders with aging eyes needing to sharpen voice identification, this book is a big help, particularly if you have a place to sit because the book is much too heavy and awkward to carry in the field.

Too big and bulky for the page content and illustration sizes. Some songs questionable. Not regional enough for me. Best donated to a nature center or library.

I had seen this book before I bought it so I new what I was getting and I wasn't disappointed. I highly recommend it.

After owning one for a couple of years, I got another as a birthday gift for my brother in law...there were several new choices available, mostly less expensive, but I decided on this, because I KNOW it, and trust the content...one thing everyone should be aware...with many birds,the calls recorded are not the ONLY calls of the spieces,but usually the most prevailent...so don't be surprised if you hear something different...

This is a very good book. I bought myself one and this one I sent to my brother in Idaho. I LOVE this book. If you are a bird lover, you need this book.

I received this book as a gift a few years ago, and since then, I have given 4 of them as gifts to my bird-loving friends! I also shared it with a friend who just turned 3 years old. She enjoyed learning the names of the birds and the sounds they make. I have learned to identify birds by their sounds, without even seeing them!

An excellent and entertaining book providing good audio of North American bird's songs. Provides the ability to actually listen to wild North American bird's songs that one would hear while walking or sitting in the outdoors. A fun and entertaining book as you read about a bird, listen to its song and compare or observe the color of the bird's plummage.

I 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

This 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.

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.

This 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.

Good 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.

Excellent book. We all love hearing the 250 bird songs incluced in the book. If you hold the search button down you can quickly go to any of the 250 songs. My grand kids spend hours with the book.

Bird Songs is a wonderful addition to our home library. We enjoy our backyard birds, watching them every morning from our porch. Now we can learn their songs so we can identify them if we don't actually see them. The book is easy to use. Just enter the identification number of the bird into the programmed speaker and the particular bird call will play. In addition to the birds' songs, much information is given about each of the birds such as their habitat, nesting, migration and any peculiar habits.

I've had so much fun listening to the songs of the birds I see...and the ones I don't. I'm learning to recognise the songs when I hear them outside my window! Beautiful bird book to share with my friends!

The book is excellent. Easy to find the bird and its song. A pleasure to sit on the porch and mimic the birds.

It is a very nice, interesting, and useful book. It is not, however, well organized, so that it is hard to find a bird. Also, for each bird the book only gives one phrase from its song.

Was familiar with tis series and this is a great addition.

I really liked this book when I saw it at our local zoo in the Wetlands area. The pictures are great, sounds good.
However, it is not a very portable book. It is rather big and heavy. Also, there are so many birds in this book that if you are at a low number and want to hear a higher number, it takes a while to get to the number. Perhaps they would make it so that we could type in the numbers like a juke box in the future. For someone looking for a PORTABLE option to bring outside, I would recommend getting either the Birdsong Identiflyer or Iflyer which are much easier to use. (You just scan the bar code next to the bird!!)
The Iflyer seems like it is more expensive, but ends up being the better bargain for more birds/songs and carrying case. Also, the Iflyer comes with tabs to put in your own bird books.

My 3 year old grandson loves this book. He now knows 95% of the birds by sight and a lot by their songs. He is constantly looking for birds where ever he goes now. Also bought backyard birdsongs and will buy the next one for the western US soon.

This a just a great book/gift. Everyone that looks at it ends up ordering it.

I enjoy the sound features for the birds in the book "Bird Songs 250 North American Birds in Song" by Les Beletsky. The index is hard to use due to the fact that they don't use the common name first. For example, if I wanted to look up Cardinal, I have to know it's a Northern Cardinal (it's listed in the N's). I would suggest they categorize all the Wrens, followed by their specific name i.e. Wren, House. Otherwise it's a beautiful book.

This book provides a visually pleasing discovery of various bird species and their songs. Without any hesitation I'd recommend it for older folks with limited mobility, young ones and everyone in-between. Just know that it is rather hefty--not flimsy and lightweight. This book has many beautiful illustrations and brief text information. It was presented to my 80-year-old mother when she recently came to visit. As mutual bird lovers we poured over the pages together and I managed to fit it in her suitcase for her return flight home. Today she has spent many hours at her kitchen table--discovering more about the different species and sampling the songs. It has served as visual stimuli and a study tool and certain songs have even taken her back to earlier childhood days. It is heartwarming to know this bird songs book keeps her mind stimulated and has provided hours of enjoyment. My only regret is not having a copy of my own!

This is a visually pleasing auditory discovery book of various bird species. Without hesitation I would recommend it for older folks with limited mobility, young kids and everyone in-between. Just know that it is a hefty book, NOT a flimsy, lightweight one. It has many beautifully painted illustrations with brief text information and was presented to my 80-year-old mother when she recently came to visit. Mutual bird lovers, we poured over many pages together and I managed to fit it into her suitcase for her return flight home. Today she has already spent many hours at her kitchen table, learning more about various birds and sampling the songs. It has served as visual stimuli and a studying tool and certain songs have even transported her back to childhood. It's heartwarming to know this book has kept her mind stimulated and provided hours of enjoyment. My only regret is not having a copy of my own!

This is a great resource for identifying birdsongs. It is easy to use, and the sounds are clear. Highly recommended.

Our family loves this book. You just punch in the number corresponding to the bird you are looking at and you can hear the bird song. Great pictures too.

When I purchased this book the first time, I thought it would be entertaining to people who have seen many birds at their bird feeders over the years. I was completely unprepared for the actual calls of each bird shown in the book. They are so realistic that the first time I pushed the button, my indoor-always cat flew across the room and up onto the book to grab that bird, ripping three little tears in the page in his pursuit. Wow!
Since then I have purchased it several more times to surprise my sister and other relatives and friends. It's always a hit!

More birds are recognized by their songs than by sight. This is a great way to learn.

I bought this to help teach the Boy Scout merit badge of Bird Study and become quite impressed by the sheer ammount of information pressed inside this gorgeous book. The illustrations are detailed, and Beletsky gives plenty of insight into each bird and the reason behind its particular call. I would have liked a little more knowledge about the birds' ranges, but this is still very informative and the bird song player is excellent to have around.

The Easter Bunny delivered this book to our family--total impulse purchase. One daughter (age 8) loves birds and reads birding guides regularly, the other (age 5) loves fun stuff, and they were both entertained for hours. The variety of bird sounds is amazing. There is just enough information on each bird's page to familiarize yourself, but it's not intimidating. The illustrations are gorgeous and detailed.

Now the girls play calls for each other--the book works like a mini-CD-player with numbered tracks--and try to guess the bird, and they are starting to identify real bird sounds they hear in our coastal neighborhood. We took the book to our 25-family-member Easter dinner and it was a conversation piece everyone really enjoyed. I ended up sending Grandma a copy because she was so enchanted.

Love this book.

First of all, it only has one picture - I would like both male and female. Next you have to go up and down one number at a time to find your bird - to over 250! it would be much better to be able to enter the number with a keypad.

I bought this book for my Aunt who just loves birds. She loves it! She tells me the birds sound like the real ones.

The bird songs in this book are true to life and the beautiful illustrations are helpful in identifying birds. From the eerie call of the loon to the cackling of the ivory billed woodpecker this book is sure to please not only the birder but the armchair naturalist as well.

This is a wonderful book........filled with beautiful pictures and actual bird songs for each bird. We really enjoy looking up our backyard birds and identifying their songs. This is a wonderful way to teach children about nature. My 4 year old granddaughter just loves this book and wants to look at it together every times she visits. I highly recommend this book, especially if you have children!

I bought this for my two year old because she loves songbirds. Because you must advance in number forward or backward in order to hear a song (they go up into the hundreds), we do need to sit with her to match the correct song to the correct bird, so this is not a "read alone" book. We don't see this as a hindrance; it's great for us, as we learn along with her. The illustrations are lovely, and the songs clear. They list by bird whether the song is male, female, or immature. Lots of fun and highly recommended!

First let me say my children (3,5 & 11) LOVE this book!
The 3yr will mimick sounds for 30+ minutes at time. The 5yr has increased her math skills tremendously by just clicking up and down the range of audio numbers and can now easily count to 250!

The audio is excellent - and our ears are definitely more in tune to hearing birds around us now. At breakfast the kids are yelling out that a cardinal, robin and blue jay are somewhere in the trees outside.

Adults will be frustrated though - you cannot just key in the audio # you want to hear. You continually have to scroll up and down the 250 audio clips. The index is only written for the page # of each bird (not the audio #) - AND only one specific name is listed for each. (someone here already mentioned the Chickadee will only be found under "Black Capped Chickadee") - So I had to take the entire list and create an index by audio # for the kids and using multiple names where necessary. We just taped it into the front cover. It would have been better if the first bird appeared on page 15 - to have that bird be audio #15 as well - instead of audio #8 can be found on page 14. Just a bit frustrating.

All in all I am very glad we have this book for our kids though!

My 7 year old son has both the 200 bird and 250 bird songs books and in 3 months has memorized all 450 of the bird songs. He can identify each bird by name and number just by hearing the bird song. Wow, what a great gift!

I bought this book for my 87 year old mother who has mid-stage Alzheimer's disease. She absolutely loves it. With some practice she has been able to find birds she recognizes and to play the recordings of their actual songs, which she often also recognizes. She even reads about the birds on her own, which she enjoys even though she doesn't remember what she read for very long. The book is also something that is enjoyable to look at and listen to together with others. I don't want to give the impression that this is a book of interest only to the elderly or young people with little sophistication. It is a seriously researched book that is well written, beautifully illustrated, and uses actual recordings of the bird songs. To play the song of a certain bird readers simply uses arrow keys on an audio player on the inside back cover to scroll up or down until they come to the page number corresponding to the bird they want to hear. Serious bird lovers and bird lovers will find it helpful and interesting. But it has the unique capacity to capture the attention of older people as well and would be a good purchase by their family members or by senior centers. We have also purchased the other book which covers birds of the world outside North America.

My husband and I bought this book about a month ago and have really enjoyed it. So far, the book has had pictures and recordings of all of the birds we've wanted to look up. I love the fact that you can match a bird to its call, particularly since we are really amateur birders. This book was tough to find in stores and I ordered it for Christmas in 2006, but it was backordered so much that it never arrived. My guess is that a lot of people like this concept as much as we did. The only drawback is that its a little big to take on a birding walk or a trip. Worth the money.

This is a wonderful book. My grandchildren are fascinated by the book and head for it whenever they visit. We quiz each other to see if we can name the birds by hearing their song, and then listen for and look for the birds when we are outside.

When I saw this I just had to buy it. I have no regrets, however I find it somewhat tedious to have to scroll through the numbers to get to the one I want. I would like to see this stream lined.

This is a wonderful way to learn bird songs and is a great gift for any avid birder in your life who loves the sweet melodies of bird songs.

I bought this for my nine year old son because he is really interested in birds. Not only did he love it, but even non-bird lover's have had fun listening to bird calls as well! Makes a nice gift.

I did not expect the audio on this book to be so clear and accurate. It is so authentic that one day while sitting outside with the book, I was actually able to call in birds...amazing.

Books make great gifts and this one was one of the best. The whole family has had great fun looking up birds and listening to their calls. It was more than I expected and I plan to purchase another one for someone else.

I find this will be an excellent guide for identifying birds from their songs. I purchased two, one for my granddaughter and one for myself. When spring approaches, I will give her one and she may be able to share it with classmates as a learning tool.

If you wonder what bird is singing as you are out enjoying nature, you must have this book. It really teaches you to identify birds through their sounds. This past year I used it to identify 2 nesting pairs of birds in a tall tree.