• Welcome to BirdForum, the internet's largest birding community with thousands of members from all over the world. The forums are dedicated to wild birds, birding, binoculars and equipment and all that goes with it.

    Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.
ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Your most anticipated futures books (1 Viewer)

Lynx Editions on FaceThing...

and..."The mystery will be unveiled next Monday!"
 

Attachments

  • Screen Shot 2018-06-13 at 18.36.34.jpg
    Screen Shot 2018-06-13 at 18.36.34.jpg
    45.6 KB · Views: 168
Perhaps more exciting to anyone neotropic focused, like me, is that they confirmed that Bret Whitney's Brazil guide, potentially a three volume effort, is advancing. They didn't provide any details but I poked them a bit to see if they can reveal more.
 
I don't know where I first heard about it but it's been in the works for a long time. I hadn't heard anything about it in years and was wondering if the effort were still underway, which it thankfully appears to be.

Here's a 2009 page that describes the project, and references it already having been underway for 10 years at that point, and the first volume (at that point referenced as first of four) due in a couple years (at that point):

https://fieldguides.com/news/brets-brazil-book/

Here's the quote from Lynx Edicions' FB page, found in the comments of the "mystery book": "El proyecto de guías de Brasil, liderado por Bret Whitney, sigue en marcha y está haciendo avances muy importantes...te mantendremos informado..." which translates as "The Guides to Brazil project, led by Bret Whitney, continues and is making important advances... we will keep you informed..."
 
Last edited:
It will be interesting to see what Lynx will charge for this 'very inexpensive' field guide that none of the authors are taking royalties for?

Also interesting to see how they call a four part series a 'field guide'!

It's a laudable project and I look forward to it, it seems a pity for them that Whittaker will probably beat them to it and why isn't it being more widely publicised?


A
 
Last edited:
As well it would be lovely to see volumes 3-5 of the Wildlife Conservation Society guides come to fruition but the rumors I've heard suggest they won't. Certainly the Amazonian volume would require a lot of work given the number of new species and taxonomic changes since Ridgely and Tudor published their Passerines volumes...
 
More on the HBW field guides from an email received this morning:

New collection of Field Guides: more illustrations to be included in HBW Alive

We are very pleased to announce that Lynx Edicions and BirdLife International are launching a new series of field guides: Lynx and BirdLife International Field Guides.

The main goal of the project is to produce an extensive collection of modern, standardized field guides, with special attention given to countries without any recent or country-level guide.

Notable highlights of the new field guides:
  • QR code for each species, linking to the Internet Bird Collection gallery of photos, videos and sounds.
  • Subspecies ranges denoted on the maps.
  • Illustrations of birds in flight, juveniles and non-breeding plumages.
  • Subspecies groups given full accounts.
  • Local species name and local conservation status included when available.
In order to facilitate their use, all of the field guides in the collection follow the same design, and this consistency extends to the taxonomy, which is that of the HBW and BirdLife International Illustrated Checklist of the Birds of the World. And to give more prominence to local taxa, all subspecies groups present in the region have full entries as well.

The field guides contain illustrations from the Handbook of the Birds of the World series, as well as many additional figures prepared specifically for each publication. The coverage includes males and relevant females and morphs, as well as flying waterfowl, pigeons and doves, ibises, herons, storks, shorebirds, gulls, terns and raptors, as well as a number of juvenile, immature and non-breeding plumages. Once the first title of the collection, Birds of Thailand, is published, more than 500 new illustrations will be added to HBW Alive!

Not only will HBW Alive benefit from the additional figures from the field guides, but also from updates and new information from the preparation of the titles that will be incorporated into the HBW Alive species account texts and maps.

Find out more about Birds of Thailand at the end of this Newsletter. More titles covering the Asian region are coming soon, so look for further announcements and previews!

To be released in late July.

Birds of Thailand
By Uthai Treesucon and Wich'yanan Limparungpattanakij
Series: Lynx and BirdLife International Field Guides

This new field guide will help you identify all 1049 species to have been recorded in the country to date, including the 20 species endemic or near-endemic to Thailand.

  • Taxonomy follows the HBW and BirdLife International Illustrated Checklist of the Birds of the World.
  • Detailed texts covering status, habitat and behaviour, age, sex and geographical variation, voice, and confusion species.
  • Almost 2200 illustrations covering all species and distinctive subspecies, birds in flight, males and females, juveniles and non-breeding plumages, where appropriate.
  • QR code for each species, linking to the Internet Bird Collection gallery of photos, videos and sounds.
  • More than 1025 full-colour range maps for all species other than vagrants.
  • Well-marked subspecies groups receive full accounts, and the distributions of subspecies breeding in the region are clearly mapped.
  • Local species name and local conservation status included.

SPECIAL OFFER UNTIL AUGUST 31st
54.00 € (regular price 60€) .PRE-ORDER NOW
FREE shipping worldwide
 
More on the HBW field guides from an email received this morning:

New collection of Field Guides: more illustrations to be included in HBW Alive

We are very pleased to announce that Lynx Edicions and BirdLife International are launching a new series of field guides: Lynx and BirdLife International Field Guides.

..........

How come such interesting info goes to just some selected individual(s)? :-C
 
Something to do with having a subscription to HBW online would be my first guess? I do.

It was my understanding that I was also on that list. Anyway, I have now placed my order. Looks really attractive. And it will likely push my need for a phone that can use those QR codes. :-O So far, I'm still in the pre-smartphone era.
 
It was my understanding that I was also on that list. Anyway, I have now placed my order. Looks really attractive. And it will likely push my need for a phone that can use those QR codes. :-O So far, I'm still in the pre-smartphone era.

I see kids when I'm in the City and they look at mine and don't relise it's actually a phone, it's that old, no camera and no internet, it can be done, life without 24hr internet is possible!


A
 
Last edited:
At least, it can now be found on the LYNX website: https://www.lynxeds.com/product/birds-thailand-0

Odd size for a field guide at 23cm x 16cm., Robson being 21cm x 15.2

This part of the World being what it is, I can't hep thinking that a regional guide would have been more beneficial than a single country guide, do they intend separate volumes for Vietnam, Laos , Burma, Cambodia, Malaysia?



A
 
Last edited:
I'm sure this will be an excellent field guide, but Thailand seems to be a curious choice in the light of "special attention given to countries without any recent or country-level guide", given that the country is already adequately covered by Robson. Is this an upgrade worth £50?

Just as curious, perhaps, is to restrict coverage to Thailand. With relatively little extra work, coverage could have been extended to the whole of Indochina and mainland Malaysia.
 
I'm sure this will be an excellent field guide, but Thailand seems to be a curious choice in the light of "special attention given to countries without any recent or country-level guide", given that the country is already adequately covered by Robson. Is this an upgrade worth £50?

Just as curious, perhaps, is to restrict coverage to Thailand. With relatively little extra work, coverage could have been extended to the whole of Indochina and mainland Malaysia.


Robson's Thailand guide was published in 2002. There have been splits since then that it does not cover. The compact version of his Southeast Asia guide came out in 2005, covers about 300 more species, and lacks range maps. It too does not cover some recent splits.

A single country guide to Thailand is going to be considerably more convenient for couple of reasons. First, range maps don't have to cover the vast area of all of Southeast Asia, so you would be able to determine the range within Thailand more accurately without squinting. Second, hundreds of species that don't occur in Thailand won't crowd the pages. Third, you can include local names in Thai, making it more useful for local birders. (Including local names in all the languages of Southeast Asia wouldn't be practical). Fourth, one of the goals of the series is to include information on local conservation status. That isn't going to work very well for a broad area. Fifth, other things being equal, a single country guide will be lighter and more compact.

So personally, I think it's a pretty good choice of an area in need of an update. I don't think there are many with a more urgent needs at this point, maybe Mexico, Argentina, or west China–but they are only marginally more urgent, and some have new guides that are purportedly in the works. I agree there is also a need for a broader guide covering the whole of Southeast Asia. But the one we have for that is more recent then Thailand (and there is the even more recent Arlott guide), and the goals of the series would be difficult to meet for broad area guides. Also, the Robson guides are pretty good, but the text is dry and the colors on some of the plates come across as a bit drab. So a guide that is a bit more engaging would be an improvement.
 
Last edited:
Robson's Thailand guide was published in 2002. There have been splits since then that it does not cover. The compact version of his Southeast Asia guide came out in 2005, covers about 300 more species, and lacks range maps. It too does not cover some recent splits.

A single country guide to Thailand is going to be considerably more convenient for couple of reasons. First, range maps don't have to cover the vast area of all of Southeast Asia, so you would be able to determine the range within Thailand more accurately without squinting. Second, hundreds of species that don't occur in Thailand won't crowd the pages. Third, you can include local names in Thai, making it more useful for local birders. (Including local names in all the languages of Southeast Asia wouldn't be practical). Fourth, one of the goals of the series is to include information on local conservation status. That isn't going to work very well for a broad area. Fifth, other things being equal, a single country guide will be lighter and more compact.

So personally, I think it's a pretty good choice of an area in need of an update. I don't think there are many with a more urgent needs at this point, maybe Mexico, Argentina, or west China–but they are only marginally more urgent, and some have new guides that are purportedly in the works. I agree there is also a need for a broader guide covering the whole of Southeast Asia. But the one we have for that is more recent then Thailand, and the goals of the series would be difficult to meet for broad area guides.

All just my opinion of course, but I can't really agree here. If you look through the earlier posts on this thread, I don't think a single commenter mentioned Thailand as being a priority. Robson might be getting on a bit, but as a field guide it was ahead of its time and the plates - which are ultimately the most important element of a field guide - look to be on a par with the Lynx sample plates.

As far a maps are concerned, increasing coverage to include Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia looks possible without reducing the scale of the maps (based on the sample plates), so likely no adverse effect there. And I'm really not sure that "hundreds" of additional species would need to be covered.

Regarding local names, I can't say how useful these are in practice, but it would hardly be a big deal to include, say, Vietnamese names.

It seems highly unlikely that Laos or Cambodia will get their own field guide: perhaps Vietnam will, with about 90% or more shared coverage with Thailand.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top