Books in Peterson First Guide series

This guide covers all the species of reptiles and amphibians found in western North America. More than 650 full-color paintings and photographs show key details for making accurate identifications. Color range maps give species' distributions. Important information on conservation efforts and survival status rounds out the detailed species descriptions.

Detailed descriptions of insect orders, families, and many individual species are illustrated with 1,300 drawings and 142 superb color paintings. Illustrations - which use the unique Peterson Identification System to distinguish one insect from another - include size lines to show the actual length of each insect. A helpful glossary explains the technical terms of insect anatomy.

The first comprehensive guide to the sounds of eastern North American birds, featuring an innovative visual index that allows readers to quickly look up unfamiliar sounds in the field. Bird songs and calls are just as important as visual field marks in identifying birds. But until now, the only way to learn them was by memorization. With this groundbreaking book, it’s possible to visually distinguish bird sounds and identify birds using a field guide format. At the core of this guide is the spectrogram, a visual graph of sound. With a brief introduction to five key aspects—speed, repetition, pauses, pitch pattern, and tone quality—readers can learn to visualize sounds, without any musical training or auditory memorization. Picturing sounds makes it possible to search this book visually for a bird song heard in the field. The Sound Index groups similar songs together, narrowing the identification choices quickly to a brief list of birds that sound alike. Readers can then turn to the species account for more information and/or listen to the accompanying audio tracks available online, through Cornell's Lab of Ornithology. Identifying birds by sound is arguably the most challenging and important skill in birding. This book makes it vastly easier to master than ever before.

PETERSON: The best-selling field guides of all time This is the most comprehensive and trusted guide to reptiles and amphibians of western North America. The new edition retains the realistic and accurate paintings by Robert Stebbins and includes 160 color photographs for additional detail. All range maps are up to date and placed within their species accounts. Family, genus, species, and subspecies names have been updated to the currently accepted usage. Illustrations of eggs and larvae, which can aid in identifying salamanders and frogs, are a particularly helpful feature. The area covered includes Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming, Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Northwest Territories, the western corner of Nunavut, Yukon, and Baja California. Sponsored by the National Audubon Society, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Roger Tory Peterson Institute

Budding astronomers--backyard or armchair--will learn not only where to look for the planets in the nighttime sky but also how space missions to the planets and their moons have increased our understanding of Earth, its atmosphere, and the moon.More than 100 spectacular color photographs, including views from the Hubble Space Telescope of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, as well as the latest Voyager photographs of Neptune.The latest scientific information on other solar systems and extraterrestrial life, charts showing where to find the planets in the night sky, and much more.