This is probably the best-pitched level of bird guide that I know of—it’s from the same series as the Birds of Coastal British Columbia of Acorn, Baron, and Nordhagen that I have previously used, and in that sense is equally excellent (although I wonder why they decided to do without the waterproofness and stitched biunding this time), but it has a lot more birds that you might possibly see around here but are not common enough in the province as a whole to make the BC guide. It taught me that those amazing birds with the tiger stripes and leopard spots on different parts of their body that Jason is so into in his yard in North Van are Northern Flickers, and it didn’t teach me what that orange bird with the red patches I saw that one day when I pledged myself to try to make things right with Heidi was (I’m starting to think it was a well-wishing spirit, or just a hallucination), and it taught me that to find out what was up with those crazy birds I saw today on vacation on Galiano I would have to go to a book that talked about birds of Victoria rather than Vancouver, because that’s the way the habitats break down. It taught me a lot of things! That’s a good-a guidebook-a. ( )