The Crossley ID Guide: Waterfowl

The Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds, published in 2011, revolutionized birding and books by providing the first real-life approach to ID. The Crossley ID Guide: Waterfowl, the fourth of these user-friendly guides, is for both hunters and birders.

Unlike other guides, which provide isolated individual photographs or paint illustrations, this book features large, lifelike scenes that are ‘painted in pixels.’ Nearly 300 pages of waterfowl scenes – showing waterfowl in a wide range of views – near and far, from different angles, in various plumages and behaviors, including flight, and in the habitat in which they live. These  beautiful compositions show how a bird’s appearance changes with distance, and give equal emphasis to characteristics experts use to identify birds: size, structure and shape, behavior, probability, and color. This is the first book to convey all of these features visually – in a single image – and to reinforce them with accurate text. Each scene provides a wealth of detailed visual information that invites and rewards careful study.

By making identification easier, more accurate, and more fun than ever before, The Crossley ID Guides redefine how readers look at nature. Essential for anyone interested in waterfowl, it also promises to make new birders of many people who have despaired of using traditional guides.

This waterfowl guide also carries a strong underlying conservation message. If all the readers of this book come together as one, we can better protect the things we love.

The waterfowl bible with the award-winning Crossley-style plates

• Covers all of North America’s ducks, geese, and swans
• More than 5,000 photos in Crossley-style scenes – seen near and far, from different angles, and in various plumages and behaviors, including flight
• Includes other wildlife, beautiful scenery, and wing cutouts. Good teachers are fun, create reaction, and are interesting!
• Lots of mystery photos to challenge you
• Painting with pixels, rather than a paint brush, created apples to apples imagery
• Friendly, interactive writing style, cutting-edge ID, conservation, fun facts… and everything between

Editorial Reviews and Awards

Co-Winner of the 2012 Bronze Medal in Environment/Ecology/Nature, Independent Publisher Book Awards

Richard Crossley, Winner of the 2012 ABA Robert Ridgway Award for Publications in Field Ornithology, American Birding Association

Winner of the 2011 Award for Excellence in Reference Works, Association of American Publishers

This spectacular and meticulously assembled guide provides a unique way to master identification of North America’s diverse waterfowl, both on the water and in the air. Studying this book will definitely help birders, hunters, and general nature-lovers to appreciate the singular beauty, habits, and annual cycles of our ducks, geese, and swans. This book belongs in the hands of everybody who loves the great outdoors.
– John Fitzpatrick, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Director

Our Ducks Unlimited vision, ‘to fill the skies with waterfowl,’ is actually reflected in the book’s pages, both visually and thematically. Saving wetlands and waterfowl is behind every creative image, every page.
– Dale Hall, Ducks Unlimited, Chief Executive Officer

A great job of building an incredible tool for anyone interested in waterfowl. The artwork, the narrative, and the rich content provides a universal tool to understand our incredible North American waterfowl resources – a must have!
– John Devney, Delta Waterfowl, Vice President US Policy

It can take years of field experience to become fully fluent in the process of bird I.D. Richard Crossley’s books help foreshorten this by showing you how birds actually look when you see them in field conditions, showing multiple plumages, angles, flight, and resting poses. The images are also aesthetically pleasing, and you always learn something even as an experienced birder… this book will add to that by engaging both hunters and birders alike.
– Mike Parr, American Bird Conservancy, President

Identifying waterfowl in the wild can be a challenge for even the most skilled birder. Richard Crossley’s guide is an excellent tool to help train your eye to subtle colour variations, differences in plumage and other species-specific characteristics. It’s a must-have for anyone interested in waterfowl and their conservation.
– Karla Guyn, Ducks Unlimited Canada, CEO

For anyone who has ever looked skyward at the sound of passing geese, shivered in a marsh-side blind at first light, or perused the lavish treatises of Phillips, Kortright, Bellrose, Madge, and Baldassare, Richard Crossley and his team have reset the bar! Waterfowl have long captured the attention of birders, sportsmen, photographers, artists, and practically anyone with an eye for beautiful creatures set in beautiful places. The Crossley Waterfowl Guide not only sets a new standard for identifying waterfowl in the field, it also clarifies their natural and life histories, and the complexities of their conservation… Paves new ground in the area of visual creativity.
– Wayne Petersen, Mass. Audubon, IBA Director

As a long-time birder and a waterfowl hunter, I appreciate the way this book fits the needs and interests of both groups.  The details provide a fresh approach to learning waterfowl identification in the field and helps the birder and hunter figure out not just the species, but age and sex as well.  The emphasis on habitat and the other bird species that share it, is fundamental learning in the book as well.
– Bob Ford, National Coordinator, Partners in Flight