The Bird Guide: North America [pre-order]

Forthcoming title, expected March 2027. Place a pre-order today!

The Bird Guide is a landmark field guide to the birds of North America, combining unmatched illustration, field expertise, and modern data to redefine how birds are identified and understood. Published in association with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Representing a new era in bird identification, The Bird Guide illustrates North America’s spectacular avifauna in unparalleled depth, precision, and beauty. The written accounts provide an unprecedented view of birds, bringing together decades of field expertise with insights drawn from billions of bird observations, photos, sounds, and videos contributed by birders to the Cornell Lab’s eBird project and Macaulay Library. Designed to work with the digital tools that have introduced millions of people to birding, this guide delivers an experience no screen can replicate: side-by-side comparisons of similar species, quick access to key field marks, and detailed facing-page accounts that train the eye and sharpen field identification skills.

• Covers 818 regularly occurring species and 158 rare visitors across the United States and Canada
• Features more than 7,000 illustrations covering plumage, age, sex, and subspecies and hundreds of vignettes showing birds in habitat
• Intuitively designed ID plates and facing-page text allow side-by-side comparison of similar species and provide deep ID context that is impossible to achieve on mobile screens
• Comprehensive “Sounds” sections offer expert guidance for interpreting vocalizations and separating confusing species
• Complements the strengths of the Merlin Bird ID app, bridging page and smartphone in a field-ready system for sound ID
• eBird integration includes global nomenclature, including subspecies, across the guide and Merlin, ensuring ease of identification and data sharing
• Distribution maps powered by eBird data transform millions of observations into new insights about bird distribution and abundance

The Bird Guide brings together a world-class team that fuses decades of unsurpassed field expertise with incomparable artistry. Brian L. Sullivan and Christopher Wood are cofounders of eBird. Tour leading and teaching have made Michael O’Brien a legendary birder, and North America’s premier bird sound expert. Prolific author and international tour leader Steve N. G. Howell’s uncompromising field expertise has shaped modern bird identification. Paired with the artistic mastery of Ian Lewington and Lorenzo Starnini, two of the world’s finest bird illustrators, The Bird Guide is the most comprehensive, beautifully illustrated, and technologically integrated field guide to North American birds ever produced.

“We’re thrilled to partner with Princeton University Press on this beautiful and modern guide that brings together the best from printed pages and the digital world. The Bird Guide connects readers to birds and nature, and will work hand in hand with the Lab’s powerful ID tools, including unparalleled distribution maps and data-sharing opportunities from eBird, and real-time sound recognition with the free Merlin app—all to make birdwatching more accessible than ever.”—Ian Owens, executive director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology