What Makes a Great Field Guide? My Favorite Nature Books!
This past weekend, I was teaching a group of kids how to use field guides to identify and learn about the things you find in nature, and in developing this lesson, I had the chance to dig into some of my favorite nature guides and nature-ish books (and ended up ordering a few I wish I had!).
If you have never thought much about this before, or don’t think you will be interested, don’t worry! Below there will be traditional guidebooks, but there are also chickens, some information about Sasquatch, and some poetry as well.
Overall, the field guide-type books I love tend to fall into two categories. First, I love field guides that are super easy to navigate, with well lit, high quality pictures or detailed illustrations. I like it when these have enough detail to help me easily identify something, but not anything so scientific I need another book to figure out what they are talking about.
Then there are really beautiful books that are both informational and artistic.These books might not help identify anything, but they are so fun to read or look at, and they allow me to see the world in new and interesting ways.
Great Field Guides:
Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast by Jim Pojar and Andy MacKinnon
Known colloquially among my naturalist friends, the “Pojar” is hands-down one of the best guidebooks out there. It is dense (and heavy) but not too big, the paper feels outdoor-proof, and it is a breeze to navigate, with great pictures and great identifying marks. Many guidebooks take the cheaper route of putting their pictures in a small glossy inset within a book with “normal” pages, which I don’t like, as you have to flip back and forth between the photo and the information. One of the things I love is that this book just jumps right in and makes the whole book glossy and colorful.
If I take one book with me on a hike where I am serious about identifying plants, it is almost always this one.
If you don’t live in the Pacific Northwest, the publisher Lone Pine Publishing has a number of other guidebooks that are similar organizational systems and the same great weatherproof paper.
Cascade-Olympic Natural History by Daniel Mathews
I have a deep and abiding love for this book that has outlasted TWO more recent updates (you can find those below). The original book is more of a “book” texture, with thin paper pages, and a small photo section in the middle. However, the true magic of this book is that Mathews is both informative and funny.
This book is too broad to have everything, so I may only be able to get a general sense of what kind of plant or animal something is, but I always discover something interesting, and the descriptions have a delightful wit that I really appreciate, which is demonstrated in the above photos.
If pictures are important to you, there have been a pair of updates to this book under different titles (Natural History of the Pacific Northwest Mountains/Cascadia Revealed). The Natural History title has glossy paper and color pictures, and is definitely better in the field. They are both the same update, and are simply the same book under two different titles, so you don’t need both!
For my inland friends, he also wrote the Rocky Mountain Natural History, which is equally good.
Fylling’s Illustrated Guide to Pacific Coast Tide Pools by Marni Fylling
While pictures can be helpful, I do find that sometimes illustrations can help me identify things more easily. They highlight key features, and good illustrators can capture small identifying differences in a way that pictures cannot. This is particularly true for the as underwater photography is hard to get right.
This is one reason that this book is my favorite tide pool guide out there. The other reason is that it is simply beautiful. In fact, this book is one kinda fits in both categories, as I would be just as happy with this book on my coffee table as I am with it when I am at the beach!
The Nature Study Guides Series by Wilderness Press (a few favorites include Pacific Intertidal Life, Pacific Coast Tree Finder and Pacific Coast Berry Finder)
This is more of a general recommendation than a specific book, but these tiny little field guides focus on one aspect of identification (berries, trees, tide pools) and guide you towards identifying the species and family.
This series is a good one when you want to specialize in a particular thing, or when you can’t quite figure out where to start in the larger guidebooks, especially when you are still learning what parts of a plant are animal are used to identify separate species. For example, plants are often classified by leaf shape, pattern and texture etc, and these books walk you through each feature in a step by step decision tree.
My only frustration is that the Pacific Coast books are often out of print, so you have to do some creative searching to track them down.
Beautiful Art Books:
Nature Anatomy by Julie Rothman
This book is part field guide and part nature journal, and it is all wonderful! Rothman explores nature through line drawings, and looks at patterns, habitats, seasons and so many other things. Her artwork is simple but effective, and these books are just a joy to flip through.
What is also fun is that she has continued this series, so there are also illustrated guides for Food Anatomy, Ocean Anatomy, Wildlife Anatomy and Farm Anatomy (hence the chickens!)
Cascadia Field Guide by Elizabeth Bradfield, David Sheffield and C. Marie Fuhrman
This is a book I JUST got in the mail this week, and I am so excited about it as I have been looking forward to hit since 2020. This book is both a field guide and an exploration of nature. It’s original conception was to connect plants via their relationships to each other rather than by traditional “Western” taxonomy (the idea being that a Douglas Fir and the fungi it partners with would be listed together rather than in the “tree” section and the “fungi” section).
It seems to have changed a bit, and is mostly just organized by general region, but it has some beautiful artwork and poetry in each section, so it’s going to be fun to explore!
Northwest Trees by Stephen Arno
There is a bit of the theme here, which is that my favorite nature books contain illustrations rather than pictures, and sometimes few of these. This book doesn’t even have color.
However, it remains my favorite book about the trees of the Pacific Northwest because the descriptions of the trees, their lives and their habitats are well written, narrative and yet very complete, and the black and white illustrations do a great job of helping you see identifying features such as overall silhouette, needle pattern, and cone shape.
The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady by Edith Holden
I discovered this book, appropriately, in a thrift store, and it surpasses the “little old lady” vibe by so much, I don’t quite know how to describe it. This was originally written in 1906 and, as far as I can tell, it is a faithful copy of a year long nature journal kept by Edith.
Her illustrations are beautiful and lush, and she does a great job of capturing the plants and animals she sees, their interactions, and the changes of the season. Her written log is simple and evocative as she describes her walks through the countryside, the weather and her travels.
This is a great book for anyone who just wants to stroll down country lanes and watch birds sing, and it may even inspire you to start noticing the changes around you!
Field Guide to Sasquatch by David George Gordon
I promised you Sasquatch, and here it is! I don’t actually know the history of this series, but the Field Guide to Sasquatch is a thin and perfect little book, and the company that publishes it has published numerous other guides in the same style for non-mythical animals (although I think they are mostly out of print!). These are usually small printings that act as fundraisers for the organizations involved, and they have me on a collecting quest now!
As far as I can find, the series includes Slugs, Bald Eagles, Geoducks, Orcas, Salmon, Bison and Grizzly Bears. We have the Bald Eagle, the Grizzly and the Sasquatch one, but I would love to collect the rest!
Whether or not you are excited about field guides, I hope that you found something to love on this list, and I hope you have a lovely week!
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