Real wildlife, true colors, one pencil set.
Every page starts as a real wildlife photo and ends as a mosaic you color with a standard 24-count set of colored pencils. Finish it and you are holding an animal you can name.
- Birds first; mammals, butterflies and more to follow
- 24 pencils, numbered the same in every book
- Large-print editions
- Free full-color answer keys
Northern Cardinal
Cardinalis cardinalisMade like a field guide, colored like a puzzle.
Real sources only
Every plate comes from a wildlife photo or a naturalist image in the public domain, never clip art. Each photographer is credited in the back of the book.
One number, one pencil
Pencil 1 is always Red and 24 is always White, in every book of the series, birds or beasts. Learn the key once.
A field-guide index
A contents page and an A to Z species index, with each animal's name on its page, so the finished book works as a keepsake.
Backyard Birds
Forty common North American birds, from the American Robin to the Wood Duck, each drawn from a real photograph and tuned by hand so the colors you lay down match the bird outside your window.
| Pencils | Any 24-count colored pencil set. The color names inside match common sets. |
|---|---|
| Pages | One plate per page with its color key underneath, a contents page and an A to Z index. |
| Answer keys | Full-color keys are free online. Scan the QR code in the book. |
| Where to buy | Amazon first, then bookstores and libraries through IngramSpark. |
Black-billed Magpie
A new plate every month, printable at home on letter paper. Subscribers get it first, a week before it goes up here.
Scanned the code in your book? You're in the right place.
The book prints in black ink to keep the price down. The full-color keys for every plate are here as a free PDF, four plates to a page. No sign-up needed.
Large Print Color Edition: your keys are printed at the back of the book.
Preview: the download opens when Book 1 is out.
Print a plate tonight
The same plates as the books, as letter-size PDFs you can print as often as you like. Good for gifts, classrooms and memory-care activities.
Plates from Book 1
Finished pages from readers will join these after launch. Send yours by replying to any Field Notes email.
From a photo to your page
A real photograph
We start from a public-domain wildlife photo where the animal fills the frame and its eye is clear.
Matched to your pencils
Our software maps every patch of feather or fur to the closest of the 24 standard pencils, then we touch up the eye and details by hand.
You color, cell by cell
Find the number, pick up that pencil, fill the cell. Light pressure lets the grid fade; layer two pencils to blend.
Check with the key
Compare your page with the free full-color answer key. Most plates take 2 to 4 relaxed hours.
Birds first, then the rest of the field guide
- Dec 2026
Backyard Birds
40 common birds, standard and large print.
- Early 2027
Audubon's Birds
Mosaics made from the 1840s hand-colored plates.
- 2027
Backyard Wildlife
Fox, deer, rabbit, squirrel and owls.
- 2027
Butterflies and Moths
From photos and vintage natural-history plates.