The 6 Best Midwest Field Guides (2023 reviews)

If you are looking to buy an all-around great guide for your daily purpose, kenn kaufman midwest field guide is the right option. It's a great overall book for plant, tree, bird, and wildlife identification. It's great for nature ID in the woods. The descriptions are brief but useful, with highlighted field markers or bold-faced information. This makes for awkward browsing in the field where only one hand may be available, the other being occupied by a camera, binoculars, walking stick, or whatever. It's so fun to look things up as you spot them.

This field guide offers detailed, color photos and is easy to use. The size is perfect big enough to include everything needed small enough to take on the go. Highly recommend this book for any mature lover who wants to know more and identify everything from trees, to birds, to moths.

Why We Like This:

Great for insects and birds, especially
Easy to follow and anyone can understand with seasonal maps
Handy to have both plants and animals in the same book

Best For comparing To Wild finds: Teresa Marrone Midwest Field Guide

Buy on Amazon

The teresa marrone midwest field guide is capable of outshining several other guide featured in this list in overall features for the price point. It’s a truly phenomenal book. This has made walks through the woods turn into treasure hunts. It’s small, because it’s meant to be a field guide, as well as taking it along with you. It’s small enough that you can fit it in a jacket pocket, but holds the necessary information you need in the woods.

These are moderately stout and typically wider at the base, which often is surrounded by whitish mycelium (threadlike fungal filaments) that may be visible in the growing substrate. The photographs are excellent in this book, the descriptions are detailed, and each includes important identification features like spore print color, texture, and reaction to bruising. It will keep you from eating poison mushrooms if you take time to compare pictures and read descriptions. It's small enough that you can fit it in a jacket pocket, but holds the necessary information you need in the woods.

Why We Like This:

Good color pics etc,great reference, small, easy to carry with when out foraging
Gives details on edible or non-edible varieties of mushrooms
A must have for any beginner mushroom hunter
Perfect size to fit in your pocket

Best For Wisconsin Bird watchers: Stan Tekiela Midwest Field Guide

Buy on Amazon

Not everyone likes to purchase guide for their daily purpose, but the stan tekiela midwest field guide would be an anomoly. This book makes finding the local birds found in Wisconsin very easy. It is an award-winning author, naturalist, and wildlife photographer. It provides helpful, trusted information—from observation tips to bird anatomy. Birds are grouped by main colors and there are picture illustrations of both male and female birds in color. It is simple and fun with species organized by color. It includes cross references if the male and female are different colors.

This series is a great resource for those who love to watch birds. It is easy to flip through and find the bird you're looking for.

Why We Like This:

Very helpful for the casual bird enthusiast
Makes find a bird really quick
Lot of satisfied buyers

Best Book: Bleu Sayles Midwest Field Guide

Buy on Amazon

We would, of course, be remiss if we didn't mention bleu sayles midwest field guide for daily purpose. This book will provide you with a wealth of mushroom foraging knowledge. It’s a well written book that both the novice and expert forager will find value in. It includes pictures, and even recipes. This book is good and has useful knowledge and would be good for any one who loves mushrooms.

This is a great beginner's mushroom foraging guide. It’s a really nice reference but it also offers so much more about each mushroom. This book has a lot of different recipes for the mushrooms. It’s another winner for a promising foraging series.

Why We Like This:

Each chapter is similarly arranged, and similarly well crafted
Helpful high-res photos help considerably too
Great book to have in your stash
Good for anyone starting to learn about mushrooms

Best Guide: Poppele Midwest Field Guide

Buy on Amazon

The poppele midwest field guide might be a relatively new release, but it's still nothing short of impressive this year, thanks to multiple price cuts and added new features over the past few months. It makes cross-referencing so much easier than carrying all the books around. It measures about 8" – 9" in diameter and is usually marked with a fan of excavated earth. It fits nicely in your cargo pants pocket. It includes the tracks illustrated to life size, a super handy size range reference next to the track pictures, and a textual account about the animal’s life history and associated signs a tracker may find.

It is for those who are not familiar with all the critters that live in your specific area, jon has included not only pictures and behavior descriptions of these critters but range maps. The track descriptions are succinct and easy to understand. This book is well thought out and organized.

Why We Like This:

You also get extra info like tree rubbish from deer and bear scratching
Fantastic illustrations and great description of track patterns
Excellent book for the midwest region and beyond

Best Field Guide: Homoya Midwest Field Guide

Buy on Amazon

The homoya midwest field guide's material feels more premium than its price would suggest. Covering around 1, 000 species, this is definitely a step up from a beginner's field guide to wildflowers. It has gorgeous photos and is a nice way to start identifying flowers by color and then alphabetically by family, genus, and species. The introductory material on the ecoregions of the Midwest and plant families is well done and useful.

The book is organized first by flower color and then alphabetically by family, genus, and species. It is easy to follow in associating plants with regions and habitats. The book itself is very well put together, with a sturdy, flexible binding and paper that looks like it will stand up to a lot of abuse in the field. This is a high quality field guide and must have for those interested in wildflowers. It is logical, it will necessarily entail a lot of flipping through through through pages for a beginner. This book is a bit thick so you'll want to carry it in a backpack.

Why We Like This:

Representing lots of families and genera and also has nice photographs in accompaniment
Very useful color coded examples and photos
Colorful plates and easy to use