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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

New gull photo guide (1 Viewer)

Not a Gull fan or of photo guides, I'll hold off until I see some further reviews

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Andy, I'm curious as to why you don't care for photo guides. I find both photos and illustrations to be helpful in their own way, with photos being particularly helpful in my seawatching guide. Illustrations can be nice because they don't have potentially distracting backgrounds. It's just the bird on a white background.

Of course, one good hour of poring over a field guide should be followed by three good hours of field time with an experienced observer!
 
Andy, I'm curious as to why you don't care for photo guides. I find both photos and illustrations to be helpful in their own way, with photos being particularly helpful in my seawatching guide. Illustrations can be nice because they don't have potentially distracting backgrounds. It's just the bird on a white background.

Of course, one good hour of poring over a field guide should be followed by three good hours of field time with an experienced observer!

I don't think I'm alone in this?

Quite often, I think that illustrations are much better at highlighting very subtle ID features that are often almost impossible to catch in a photo.

It's probably different in Gulls, they're bigger for one thing and often a photo can catch a diagnostic feather arrangement or pattern. I must admit, when famous Gull watcher Killian Mullarney would write articles, accompanied by good photos, in Birding World, I could not fo the life of me, see the features he was alluding to in the text!



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I don't think I'm alone in this?

Quite often, I think that illustrations are much better at highlighting very subtle ID features that are often almost impossible to catch in a photo.

It's probably different in Gulls, they're bigger for one thing and often a photo can catch a diagnostic feather arrangement or pattern. I must admit, when famous Gull watcher Killian Mullarney would write articles, accompanied by good photos, in Birding World, I could not fo the life of me, see the features he was alluding to in the text!



A


You're not alone at all. I know many people who really got into the Peterson Guides in the US. I thought they were very good, but I wasn't blown away by them.

As for gulls, I'm not trying my hand with them... yet. :)
 
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