stonechat1
New member
Got my copy today. Shipping was exactly one week from ordering, even while the book went over Frankfurt!
Guess mail to the out-of-EU Switzerland takes longer? ...............
......... - they were all the same. I find the colours on eg some ducks, albatrosses and shearwaters very distracting.
.....
My already creaking shelves won't ne troubled by this or the preceeding volume. If ever a set was stretched to an unwarranted extent it's this.
Andy
My already creaking shelves won't ne troubled by this or the preceeding volume. If ever a set was stretched to an unwarranted extent it's this.
Andy
You aren't too shy to give a well-founded review of this book that I, and with me many world birders find rather excellent and worth the money, are you?
Without this book, you would have to buy some other guides from nearby countries other than Costa Rica and put the maps together in order to know what species are 'hard' targets and what species have back-up sites in other countries + with all the splits and illustrations of ID-able subspecies it is excellent for planning and keeping an overview.
You see from 1 or at max. maybe 3-4 pages how many woodpeckers / barbets / toucans / ... you can still see as lifers in one area. You don't have that with any other book.
If you have the volumes already, it is probably a bit superfluous information, but I don't have the volumes so I really like the way all the info is super condensed.
I also am a happy user of Scythebill, but I think for the uninitiated, I have to expand on this: the automatic thing that can happen if you click the box is to export a file for upload to ebird. You still have to do the actual upload of that file within ebird. (unless that functionality have changed drastically in the last update).You can even set it to automatically add your sightings to ebird
I also am a happy user of Scythebill, but I think for the uninitiated, I have to expand on this: the automatic thing that can happen if you click the box is to export a file for upload to ebird. You still have to do the actual upload of that file within ebird. (unless that functionality have changed drastically in the last update).
Niels
I use Scythebill, a free programme which, once you input all your own sightings, automatically produces country lists at your request and tells you how many new birds there are for you, even highlighting in bold font and indicating endemics and you can even choose which taxonomy it uses, it's amazing. You can even set it to automatically add your sightings to ebird and you can attach your own photos to your sightings.
It takes a lot of work, even if you don't add much information to your sightings, e.g just year and Country like I did. My list isn't big, just over 3K and it took me 5 days but it really is worth the effort|!
http://www.scythebill.com/
The birds of Costa Rica indicates clearly, all true and regional endemics there are. I know that not all books do this but using the HBW volume, you'd have to use it in conjunction with the site guide anyway?
You say that it's 'super condensed' so maybe the volumes would be better called HBW concise?
Regards, Andy
Robert, I would advise you to still have your data either in an online system (like I do with observado), either in an offline program (like scythebill). In this way, future splits and lumps are automatically processed with updates of the IOC / Clements / ... list.
No obligations whatsoever, but I feel those serious about world birding have all the good reasons to share their sightings through trip reports posted + a full annotated list (easy to extract from any kind of birding software like scythebill / willybase), or an online application like e-bird or observado. In this way, other birders can benefit from this info + it makes their list more credible + of course they have the benefit of having their own list available at any time for analysis / future trip planning / taxonomic updates.
For me it is a way to have the plates and maps of the complete series in a form I can afford.
The poor man's HBW...
Steven Schoevaart