Reddit reviews The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior (Sibley Guides)

Sounds like you may want to check out the Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior.

[The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior] (https://www.amazon.com/Sibley-Guide-Bird-Life-Behavior/dp/1400043867)

I am not sure how this has not been recommended yet! It is one of the best IMO.

Maybe the Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior?

I highly, highly recommend David Sibley's Guide to Bird Life and Behavior. It gives you a tremendous range of information about what are essentially ornithological subfields (evolution, migration, nesting, etc.), but written in a bright and accessible way. Plus with lots of Sibley's lovely illustration!

I might add that although it uses (mostly) North American birds as examples, the general information and insights will be true for all birders everywhere.

The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior is a good starting place. It's not as technical as the more academic textbooks, but is much more detailed than some of the other recommendations.

I'd recommend picking up a good field guide and just having fun trying to identify the birds you see around your area. The variety presented in a field guide will seem daunting at first, but it'll quickly become easier as you familiarize yourself with the common families and learn to narrow down the possibilities by range, habitat, behavior, etc. The two major fields guides are by Pizzey & Knight and Simpson & Day. The Pizzey & Knight served me well a few years ago when I was down under. As for a general interest guide, I can only recommend this one, but it's North America-centric. I don't know if there's a good counterpart for Australasia. An excellent way to learn more is to join field trips organized by your local bird club. Plenty of birders would be happy to show you the ropes. If you want to get serious about the hobby, you'd also want to get yourself a good pair of binoculars. Australia's a really fun place to go birdwatching because of its unique and exotic bird life. You're gonna have lots of fun, so get out there and look at some birds!

Hmm... If you're thinking globally, this is going to be hard. A simple checklist of all the bird species of the world is large enough to be a book, literally.

And, it's outdated at the time it's printed.

The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior might be what you're looking for, if North America is enough of the world. Embarrassingly, I own this and almost never look at it.

The Sibley Guide to the Birds of North America is a good desk reference field guide that has more information than most field guides (and is too big to carry around other than as an app on my cell phone, IMHO). I do own it both ways. The book is better, of course. But, I don't carry it as my field guide.

For more than that, you may want to pick a book narrowed down to a particular family of birds, if she has any favorites like raptors or woodpeckers.

Hope you find what you're looking for.