"This is a book for beginners and has been made as simple as possible. It is offered as a help in learning how to know the more common birds of our lawns, our fields, our woods, our waterways and our ocean shores. The way the birds are described in this book is not the way in which a scientist would describe them, nor is the order in which the bird pictures are shown the order in which a scientist would place them. There is a reason for that. Sometimes in a theater program the names of those in the cast are listed in order of their appearance on the stage. That's about the way it is with the birds in this book. They are listed more or less in the general order in which you might expect to see them if you stepped outside the door and began to look around for common birds.

"...There are many fine books...with detailed descriptions, life histories and colored plates of all the birds of North America. They have been written by famous field experts and illustrated by noted bird painters. But the very wealth of the material in many of these handbooks and heavier volumes may baffle or—worse still—discourage the beginner. The modest aim here is to provide the novice with an elementary guide to a friendly acquaintance with the more common of our native birds of North America. After that the reader may move ahead to wider and richer fields." (From the Introduction by the author)

The reader will feel, as he turns these pages, that John Kieran's "modest aim" is modest indeed. The expert ornithologist will read this book with the same delight as the beginner, for John Kieran writes with the familiarity and enthusiasm of an outdoor man to whom birds—in the field—are a source of never-ending excitement and pleasure. And Don Eckelberry's full-color paintings are superb.

From the dust jacket of the 1950 edition