Hawks in Flight: The Flight Identification of North American Migrant Raptors

by Pete Dunne, David Sibley, Clay Sutton

Book Overview

Among the world's most popular birds, hawks can be some of the most difficult birds to identify. They're most often seen flying high above and at a distance. In the first edition of Hawks in Flight,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0395510228
• ISBN13: 9780395510223
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.84 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Hawks in Flight, great source

This book is a must have for any raptor fanatic. I used to be so confused on how to tell all those buteos apart, except when it was an obvious red tail. It is definatly worth the money, it is not meant to be a "ooh look at the pretty pictures kind of bird book", it is a holistic approach to identification, you learn about flight traits of each raptor, overall impression, plumage, etc. Read the whole thing so you really get whats going on. I am much more confident and knowledgeable after having studied this book. Buy it, worth it.

excellent book

This is a really interesting book. It has some photographs (which have inspired me to get out to Cape May and other cool birding havens) but most of the pictures are black & white drawings. The detail I think is actually pretty good. The drawings do not give specific detail of color shading etc but instead provide the broader strokes of major markings or wing shape or how the bird might look looking down at you. There are head-on profiles (in different modes of flight), some top down drawings, but mostly looking up and side. The raptors are segmented into the different groups of Buteos, Accipters Falcons, Kites, Northern Harrier, Eagles & Vultures, and Osprey. Within each section each bird has a few pages with pictures and really neat info about their migration patterns as well as tips for id.I'm still not very good at id of these birds but I love watching them and trying to id them. This book is a really good resource!

The best guide for serious hawk watchers

There is no other guide which even approaches Hawks in Flight for thoroughness, clarity, and utility. Anyone who seriously pursues the sport of hawk watching must have this book.For those just starting out in hawk watching, and for general use by even the most serious hawk watchers, I strongly recommend another work by Dunne et al., Hawk Watch: A Guide for Beginners, which is a large-format condensed version of Hawks in Flight. this book does focus exclusively on eastern species, however. Having both books is ideal.

A must for hawk identification tools

This book gives excellent information on how to tell hawks apart with very little information. Peter Dunne's experience at hawk migration stations helped him to distill hawk identification keys and he presents the information in an interesting way. This is not your usual dry field guide.

Learn to see the whole bird, not just a few field marks.

A really great, useable book. Identifying a raptor is rarely difficult if you see it well. This book will help you learn to do it when you don't see the bird well.When you devote 250 pages to just 23 species, you get to include a lot of information. But this isn't a book that's crammed with facts, figures, and field marks. The descriptions, line drawings, and photographs are intended to teach you how to tell these birds apart in the real world, where profile and silhouette usually matter more than detailed markings. And they work.Although the coverage is a little biased toward the eastern U.S., this book is invaluable for distinguishing all of the buteos, accipiters, eagles, falcons, and vultures regularly found in North America, except for a number of extreme-southern species. And even if where you live you have to deal with White-tailed Hawks and Hook-billed Kites, and hope someday to find a Crane Hawk, at least this book will help you to become expert with the more widespread species.