Birds of Arizona and New Mexico

Description

Ideal for birders, hikers, and foragers, Timber Press Field Guides are the perfect tools for loving where you live 
 
Birds ofArizona and New Mexico is a comprehensive field guide to commonly found birds in the region, including local favorites and rare curiosities. This full-color guide includes precise descriptions of voices, behaviors, and habitats and details the top birding sites across the American Southwest. Authors Melissa Fratello and Steven Prager speak to and for a new generation of birders, offering a unique perspective and approach to birding that prioritizes accessibility and inclusion. They also cover the region’s unique issues, such as birding on tribal land, and birding along the Southern Border.
 

• Covers Arizona, New Mexico, and their border regions
• Describes and illustrates nearly 400 bird species
• Over 800 spectacular photographs of relevant plumages and birds in flight
• Individual range maps, showing seasonal and migratory patterns
• Easy to use for beginners and experts alike

Melissa Fratello is an ardent naturalist, photographer, tinkerer, and writer. She has worked to advance a more equitable and approachable birding community, supporting Feminist Bird Club chapters in Tucson and beyond, and currently directs Tucson Audubon Society, which she is guiding through a renaming process. She feels strongly that birders owe it to the birds they observe to protect their precious and quickly disappearing habitats, and that birding can serve as a most wonderful gateway to conservation action and as a cure to the consumerism that ails us. When she's not working, she's gardening, cooking, or exploring the far flung reaches of the Sky Islands—peeping at plants, listening for birds, and always hoping to happen upon a snake.


​Steven Prager is a field biologist, science communicator, conservation advocate, and lifelong Arizonan. He may have co-written a book about birds, but the avian world is just a small part of what keeps this naturalist busy. He’s always happy to go birding, but he’s likely to miss that passing rarity as he struggles to not let his thoughts and eyes wander to the snakes, lizards, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates (especially ants) that also call the Southwest home. He thinks that birds are best appreciated as just one part of the habitats they occupy, and he believes that the ethical enjoyment of birds and their habitats requires a commitment to their protection.  Deeply troubled by the environmental challenges—climate change, drought, and rampant development—that have in ways defined his time growing up in and exploring Arizona, he is committed to transforming people’s passion for birding into a willingness to take conservation action. Whether Steven is down in the dirt admiring the efforts of his backyard leafcutter ants or eyeball-deep in thornscrub, searching (so far unsuccessfully) for a Brown Vinesnake, he’s just happy to be outside.

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