Birdwatching Magazine (1 Viewer)

[HH75]

Hi Tim,
More power to you!I only got to go to university due to getting a grant: despite not using my qualification,I don't consider it a waste of three years.
Before you ask,I was quite studious,and was teetotal all through my college years!Used to pop over to the Lough for gulls during my lunch break on a Thursday,though.
Harry H

 

[Brian Stone]

Read several mags at the moment but if things got tight the last to go would be BB. That doesn't mean I read, let alone understand, every single word of every paper. It is just the most informative.

I think of all of them Birding World sometimes seems the most pointless, especially now most of the pictures have appeared online sometime before. But the odd article is essential and I do find the european roundup pleasantly distracting.

 

[Edward woodwood]

Hiya H.

for the record I didn't drink much at Uni as I'd kinda done that already and got it out of my system...actually worked very hard (9 am till 10:00 pm) and missed a first by 1% - honest!

 

[Bluetail]

Consider it from the magazines' point of view. There's absolutely no point in them all trying to chase the same market. They'd never survive that way. They each target a particular clientele and apparently do so quite successfully since they all seem to be surviving. In that they serve their target audiences well I think they're all good in their own ways, even though not all of them are to my taste.

Jason

 

[Brendan T]

BB shouldn't be cut to entertain people - people should educate themselves a bit so they can get something out of it perhaps. It's not lowest common denominator time in Britain yet!

Britain is becoming an anti-intellectual country.....not exactly a good thing. May be you boys should stick to listers weekly or whatever it's called

plus it is by far the best value for content - you dont get 10 pages of last months birds in there!

I would actually quite like to understand a lot of the articles in there but have major difficulties. Was looking forward to the article a few months back on Carrion/Hooded Crows for example but was bombarded by pretty technical talk of 'prezygotic barriers', 'heterozygosity' , 'phenotypes', 'progeny' (this mean offspring?) etc. I have tried to look up some of these but haven't found 'self-education' of stuff like this particularly feasible. No doubt those of you who have educated yourselves against all the odds and just missed out on firsts or whatever find this easy going but I don't.
On the issue of content, Dec 2003 BB had 8 pages on 'last month's birds'.

 

[Edward woodwood]

and issue 11 had none
and issue 9 had three
and issue 4 had one - large part of which was a photo
and issue 8 had two

and rememeber it contains more total pages too


Brendan, go into town and geta Biology under grad text book and persevere - it's hard work at first but well worth it

 

[Andrew Whitehouse]

I must admit that it's a while since I've got BB, although I used to read it a lot when I was young. I think it helped prepare me for university better than pretty much anything else. Even though I didn't understand everything in all those academic articles I at was at least more prepared for reading that sort of style and understanding the conventions of how they were written.

I don't really read any birding magazines these days, although I surreptitiously glance at the odd copy of Birdwatching in WH Smiths. I would look at Birdwatch but they always seem to put them in those plastic covers so you have to actually buy them! :C :eek!:

 

[Brendan T]

Fair enough I probably should give it another shot. BB's claim though that it is "internationally respected" for its "readability" still seems a bit bold.
Why have any pages in BB devoted to recent reports?

 

[Bluetail]

Fair enough I probably should give it another shot. BB's claim though that it is "internationally respected" for its "readability" still seems a bit bold.

It's relative. Compared with some papers I've seen in Ibis it's very readable.

Why have any pages in BB devoted to recent reports?

Have to agree with you there.

Jason

 

[christineredgate]

I think BW is a nice simple mag to read.Not too technical,some quite good pictures,and lots of little snippets of info re birds and their behaviour.Perhaps a little heavy on the ads,esp by the Swar folks,could have a little more info as I read it too quickly and wish there was more,but simple and satisfying.
Christine.

 

[Edward woodwood]

Hi Brendan /Jason et al

yes I think BB is trying to cater for the Birding World crowd (I also get this by the way!) which it can't really do and I agree the recent reports section is a bit of a waste of pages in BB

 

[guffers]

As a dude I like Birdwatching the best but I'm not keen on Birdwatch. Never tried the others nor do I have any wish to do so.

 

[Adey Baker]

The size of BB makes it much easier to store and thus keep for future reference.

I find this extremely useful although finding the precise article in over 25 volumes may take a while!

The 'Recent Reports' in BB is quite good, in retrospect - if you keep your copies of BB, which you are more likely to do than the A4-sized mags, then it gives you a 'feel' of what was about 10 or 15 years ago, say.

 

[SimonC]

Hello
This is likely to be a very short lived thread as it can be answered in one reply!

Hmmmm, didn't see this coming did I?!?!?!

 

[seb salas]

Before you ask,I was quite studious,and was teetotal all through my college years!

Shame on you!

Each to their own. I think the 4 "big" British mags have a specific target readership and there is nothing wrong with that.

Birdwatching is obviously and shamelessly geared at the more "beginner" birder. BB is for the "amateur" with a very serious interest in birding and a basic interest in ornithology. Birdwatch tries to breach the gap between experienced and beginner birders. Birding World is for serious birders who may not be particularly interested in ornithology.

I get them all and quite frankly think its amazing that all these mags actually exist and seem to be doing well.

 

[dogfish]

Tim Allwood wrote:
Brendan, go into town and geta Biology under grad text book and persevere - it's hard work at first but well worth it. (end quote)


I'm a fan of BB; it has integrity (rare among bird mags). But it is a fair criticism that some of the papers are unneccessarily opaque for a magazine aimed at the non-scientist. The over-use of obscure specialist terms without explanation is not a mark of scientific authority; it's lazy writing and editing.

I think this applies only to a minority of papers in BB (and they are perhaps becoming fewer) but clearly some contributors to this forum have been put off the magazine by them, which is a shame.

 

[Colin]

For someone who didn't know, British Birds may be thought of as a magazine dealing with the birds that are found in Britain even if a species has only be found once. However, the guidelines for contributors state "British Birds publishes material dealing with original observations on the birds of the Western Palearctic". I have seen a few copies of BB and perhaps it is coincidence but there have been articles which have not really interested me because they have been about resident birds in other parts of the WP whose chances of appearing in Britain are nil. Maybe I have been unlucky because I have also seen some interesting articles but I have not been convinced to subscribe when sometimes the mag contains little to interest me. Either they should change the guidelines for contributors and stick to "British birds" or change their title....controversial.