Collins Guide - most useless pages...

[Laurence H]

Just for fun: Collins Guide to Birds of Britain and Europe, Pages 106-7 and 360-1. Does anyone find any other pages less useful than these ones!

;)

Laurence

[Bubbs]

Just for fun: Collins Guide to Birds of Britain and Europe, Pages 106-7 and 360-1. Does anyone find any other pages less useful than these ones!

;)

Laurence

I can't agree with you. What I do find completely baffling in bird books are sonograms...what are those all about? I just find them a waste of space and paper!


John.

[alcedo.atthis]

"Collins Guide to Birds of Britain and Europe, Pages 106-7 and 360-1. Does anyone find any other pages less useful than these ones!"


So what's the problem with Geese and Kingfishers??

Regards

Malky

[Laurence H]

I'm referring to the Mullarney, Svensson, Zetterstrom and Grant book. My friend and I agreed that we'd never used these pages and never really looked at them either.
Wish we could though...

[alcedo.atthis]

"I'm referring to the Mullarney, Svensson, Zetterstrom and Grant book."

So am I!!

Regards

Malky

[NickH]

I'm referring to the Mullarney, Svensson, Zetterstrom and Grant book. My friend and I agreed that we'd never used these pages and never really looked at them either.
Wish we could though...

Found pages 106-7 very useful while watching the black francolins in Cyprus.
Eat your heart out Laurence!

[jpoyner]

Just for fun: Collins Guide to Birds of Britain and Europe, Pages 106-7 and 360-1. Does anyone find any other pages less useful than these ones!

;)

Laurence

Yes.......the ones my dog took a great junk out of.........Gray's grasshopper Warbler, Blackburnian Warbler, Black Faced Bunting oh and Barbary Dove.......and for some reason he put a big tooth mark through Cinerous Bunting. Often wondered if he was trying to tell me something. (Never did find out who put the book in his basket though, wife swears she knew nothing about it!)

John

[Tim Allwood]

dunno

361 all oml o:)

3 out of 4 on 106 oml o:) . Not seen Caspian Snowcock yet.

I do find 378 onwards as much use as a chocolate fireguard though

Tim

[Rob Smallwood]

A £99 "Teletext" holiday to Fuerteventura will get you Trumpeter Finch, you'll pay a bit more to get Crimson-winged in Eastern Turkey and a lot more for Desert Finch in Eilat (the latter cost me a wedding and a honeymoon!).

With luck (and a bumpy tractor ride) your trip to Turkey will get you Caspian Snowcock too, or if you prefer your foreign birding to have Boddingtons and Hollands Pies you could get a cheap break in Cyprus for Black Francolin.

[Tim Allwood]

all but one of those birds are possible in Turkey Rob

Mong Finch at Ishak pasha
Desert Finch at Birecik
CW Finch at Demirkasik
Casp Snowcock at Demirkasik (i got this reversed with Caucasian - which i haven't seen)
Black Francolin at Goksu Delta
Trump Finch SE Turkey

DSFrancolin is Sidi Yahya des Zaers in Morocco though!

[Rob Smallwood]

Yes - but you do have to work for them - and a lot of Forum members are more likely to do the less "exotic" locations!

Aluminium mines are no places to take 9 year old kids!

[Laurence H]

Desert Finch in Eilat (the latter cost me a wedding and a honeymoon!).



'Cost' as in paid for, rather than lost, I hope! :eek!:

[Tim Allwood]

Hi Rob

i did a walk up to the Aladag mountains and kipped at a nomad camp with those horrendously vicious dogs.... 22 snowcocks came down the next morning. Awesome. Plus CW Finch, Radde's Acc. RF Serin, Wallcreeper, Snowfinch, G Eagle, Lammergeier and a Saker

I know a lot of people do the Chromium mine these days - seems a shame not to see the area in its full beauty though.

you could take the nine-yeard-old up on a donkey. How cool would that be?

Tim

[Rob Smallwood]

Tim - He'd enjoy it - not sure his Mum would!

Lawrence - rest assured - she's still here - and still interested in birding I'm pleased to say - desite spending one of the first evenings of our honeymoon up a Wadi with Hadoram Shirihai - and not many people can claim that!

[lou salomon]

Not seen Caspian Snowcock yet.
Tim

caucasian you mean ? caspians you saw in the aladaglari i guess
agree on the most useless (378 on)

[JOSE JAVIER]

sorry, but i`ve seen double-spurred francolin (heard actually), trumpeter and crimson winged finches. Not near edimburgh :)

[Edward]

I think everyone's seen Trumpeter Finch now haven't they? I'm just glad I saw mine last week in an arid canyon in Spain rather than England (he says self-righteously, and yes, somehhat pompously).

Haven't got my Collins handy so can't quote pages but haven't had much use for the page with Desert Lark etc and there are quite a few wheatear pages I haven't used. Would love to visit North Africa or Middle East to rectify that though. Laughing Gull page is also a complete blank.

I enjoy looking at the list at the back and seeing Black-throated Green Warbler and Black-throated Blue Warbler though. Now they were great birds to see in Europe.

E

[Laurence H]

Within a week of starting this thread, who would have thougth two trumpeter finches would turn up!

Am considering starting a new thread on the uselessness of page 222 (bee-eaters and roller).

Fingers crossed!

[alcedo.atthis]

"Am considering starting a new thread on the uselessness of page 222 (bee-eaters and roller)."

Pointless, both have already visited Scotland. Pick another!;)

Regards

Malky

[cspratt]

My book is "The Birds of Europe" (same authors) but published by Princeton University Press. Same page numbers also.

[Allen S. Moore]

Yes.......the ones my dog took a great junk out of.........Gray's grasshopper Warbler, Blackburnian Warbler, Black Faced Bunting oh and Barbary Dove.......and for some reason he put a big tooth mark through Cinerous Bunting. Often wondered if he was trying to tell me something. (Never did find out who put the book in his basket though, wife swears she knew nothing about it!)

John
Was your dog hinting that you should take him on a twitch for any of the first 3 named species? I suppose that with all of those tripods standing there, he'd be in "dog heaven"!

[pete woodall]

There was a thread going on the Australian birding-aus a while ago, which suggested that local field guides could be greatly simplified. I don't remember the details but the general idea was that:

- all the waders, with the possible exception of the curlew, were just minor plumage variants, size differences were just young curlews growing up into big curlews, so that cut out 4-6 pages.
- ditto with most of the pelagic sea birds. Separating species on a tiny patch of white here and there on the wing was nonsense. The same applies to most of the gulls and terns - differences in the bill and leg colours were caused by what they had been standing in or eating - so that reduces the seabirds down to one gull and perhaps a gannet.
- birds of prey, might recognise an eagle on a good day, all the rest are immatures,
- honeyeaters - only a couple of species are present, all the rest have dustings of different coloured pollen, etc.

so you go through the field guide reducing it to the "real" birds not the figments of some artists imagination.

Pete