The only issue with the "local" books is that frequently the ID pics aren't very useful. I'd recommend either the Golden Guide or the Kaufman for a beginner, and use the local one to help narrow things down from there.
They're wild creatures, and that male was really old, by osprey standards. I saw a photo of him that a park visitor with amazing camera gear took of him before he disappeared, and he wasn't looking so good then.
Have you decided on what book you're getting? I'm partial to the Golden Guides bird book myself, but a friend prefers the Kaufman guide. Sibley's is good, but suffers from too much information for the beginning birder. Peterson's is split up into Eastern and Western birds and is pretty good (I have both, as well as a really old Golden Guide), but you have to flip back and forth between picture and range map, which is kind of a pain. Audobon has pretty pictures, but is kind of sucky for ID purposes. If you want to go high tech, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's All About Birds website is excellent (thank you, KnightDriver!), and has a free bird ID app you can download for smart phones that is apparently pretty accurate. And if you want to be AZ specific, the Arizona Traveler Guidebooks series has a Birds of Arizona booklet that I bought about 25 years ago for about $5. I also got one for wildflowers.
That sounds like an awful lot of work! Glad you're having fun, though.
I'm a fan of Braeburns, myself.
I seem to be either working or helping people move out/move in, or helping people fix things they can't fix themselves lately. I took yesterday off as a mental health day and didn't tell anyone and stayed home and was a total hermit. Spent the day playing Assassin's Creed, cleaning the kitchen (it was bugging me), walking in the woods with the dog, and surfing the web. Today, I've been doing chores at home that I haven't had time to do since before I went to Kentucky at the beginning of the month.
Christian Bale is my favorite Batman, too.
I'm hoping I can fix the futon either today or tomorrow. It's a cheaply-made one that was masquerading as a quality piece of furniture. It has finger joins (think nested "W"s) and cheap glue and started coming apart and then split. I'm going to glue it, clamp it while the glue is drying, drill some pilot holes for either wood screws (or drill all the way through for small carriage bolts, if there's room), and I have a strip of metal that I'll also drill holes in to match the ones I drill in the futon frame for added support. If it works, awesome! Saved myself a ton of money. If it doesn't, no worse off than I am at the moment and I'll start putting away a little each week to buy a solid wood futon frame from a different furniture store.
And it was on sale!!!
I'm glad the bird you helped will be OK. We sent one up to the bird rehab center last fall and they had to euthanize it because it broke its elbow 
.
I'll go check out your review.
Duct tape will fix just about anything. We once reattached a bumper with it when I was in high school.
The mosquitoes are a bit frisky, we get the regular ones, plus the salt marsh ones. The salt marsh ones are huge and really loud. Luckily, I have some pretty good repellent (DEET-free, I'm allergic to DEET) and they don't really bother me that much most of the time anyway. It's a huge plus working on the coast, the sea breeze kicks in around 2 PM just about every day and is usually stiff enough to keep them away.
