All About Birds California (Cornell Lab of Ornithology) Paperback – March 1, 2022

I purchased this for an upcoming first time trip to California where I plan to do lots of birding in a variety of locations and habitats. The layout is very nice with each species account covering a single page and showing four pictures that display a variety of poses and forms (like in flight, male vs female, breeding vs non breeding, and even juveniles in some cases). There are also brief but concise descriptions on Size/Shape, Color Pattern, Behavior, and Habitat; all useful for identification sometimes in surprising ways.The range map shows all of North America/Mexico. I am mixed on this as buying a book for CA I would prefer a detailed map of just the state but its still good overall knowledge.My problem with the book is its lack of completeness. Now, I don't expect every vagrant or edge of range only species to appear but several species of note are missing. How is it that CALIFORNIA CONDOR is not in this book!? Other omissions are also astounding; Pelagic Cormorant, Mountain Quail, Island Scrub-Jay to name a few. Why? Coming from Cornell I expected better.Something I really liked was the opening 70 or so informational pages cleanly and simply discussing the basics of "birding" as a learned hobby, tips on photography, how to attract birds to your yard (with overview of feeder and seed/food types, and how to make a nest box). Finally there is a "Getting Involved" section explaining how to use eBird and how to get involved in national counts. I found this section quite wonderful and is an immense boon to a young/new/casual birder.So overall a mixed bag; nice informative layout but with a distressing amount of omissions. Depending on who is searching I would say if you are:A SEASONED BIRDER(without knowing what else is out there) I would suggest you look elsewhere.CASUAL/YOUTHIf you just want to get an idea of whats in your backyard or a general sense of whats around your state this is a good book to get you started. The added intro pages mentioned above will be very helpful to you in a ton of ways and can really help someone dive into finding and helping birds. Would make a great gift for a middle/high school teen.(I would assume the other books in this series have the same structure).