Birds of the Canary Islands (1 Viewer)

Melanie said:

The Canary Islands is a popular destination for birders and travellers with an interest in wildlife and nature, and one of the best places in the world to see several scarce species such as the Houbara Bustard. They also hold a number of endemic birds that occur nowhere else, such as the emblematic Blue Chaffinch.

This beautifully illustrated guide covers all the birds found in the islands, providing concise descriptions for easy identification and plates for easy identification of all species. It's the perfect guide for any visitor to these sun-kissed islands.

Scheduled for February 2018

I'm curious on the account of the Gran Canaria Blue Chaffinch as it was previously always regarded as subspecies of the Tenerife Blue Chaffinch.

https://www.nhbs.com/birds-of-the-canary-islands-book

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Melanie said:

I'm curious on the account of the Gran Canaria Blue Chaffinch as it was previously always regarded as subspecies of the Tenerife Blue Chaffinch.

https://www.nhbs.com/birds-of-the-canary-islands-book

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Melanie said:

The question whether this book will follow this split. Birds of Spain (from Lynx) was published in early 2017 and they have still considered F. polatzeki as a subspecies.

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andyadcock said:

This is my point, the species lists are what's important, not what an individual author decides.

A World lister who follows e.g the IOC (like me) will split it regardless of what the author does with it.

How many lists would we have to keep if we followed authors!




A

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Swissboy said:

But with the ever changing lists one has never a base from which to go. That's why I decided to call it enough for me and stick with the HBW Illustrated Checklist. In addition that is a most convenient base simply because it is more than just a list of names like the IOC one.
It does not really matter to me whether I have a few species more or less on my life list. Often, I go by types or forms instead of species. Thus, in the case of the owls discussed elsewhere, Hume's Owl, and Omani Owl would be two types for me whether they are considered two species or not. And the idea of including Hume's Owl into the Tawny Owl as a species was so absurd for me that anybody could have said or written anything. It was always a most fascinating separate "type" or form, both by its looks and by its habitat. That's what counts for me.

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CerambyX said:

I have it - overall it's sufficiently informative (has also several pages with best locations to visit etc.) and illustrations are good (quality as expected from a Helm field guide - so maybe not on Collins level but still good) etc. The value of the book probably depends how the user intends to use the book. As a smaller, easier to carry around substitute to Collins (the book is a bit taller but much thinner) to use in the field it should do very nice and when I'll visit Canaries in the future I'll definitely will be taking it with me.

So far I would say that I kinda miss distribution maps as they would make it easier to 'read' the exact range/distribution of species. Maybe it's just nitpicking as probably it's difficult to draw very detailed maps on such small scale and the information actually is there - just scattered around a bit. Like for example - for most of species the preferred habitats (laurel forest, costal scrub etc.) are listed in the description and on the 13th page there is a map that sows the distribution of said macrohabitats on Canary islands. So using this map it is at least somewhat possible to get the idea of probable ranges of different species. So maybe it works just fine when you get more used to it.

Another nitpick would be that number of records of rare vagrants can be found only in table at the end of the book. Considering that most of pages with species accounts are left 1/4 blank (some even more - few have 1/2 of the page blank) I don't really know why that information wasn't included already in the species accounts? For example for both vagrant Gallinules (Purple and Allen's) in the description their distribution is mentioned only in one word - "Vagrant". To find out on which islands and how many times these species have been seen you have to check that table at the end of the book and that's not exactly the most fastest/comfortable way.

Also feel like that some additional information on when it's more probable to see different vagrants would be nice and made this book easier to use as stand-alone guide without checking other references (eg. Collins guide). For example for Little Bunting it only said: "Vagrant. Attracted to golf courses.". Nothing about when is the best time to find Little Buntings. Ok, of course those who are familiar with European birds (or use this book together with Collins bird guide) know that Little Bunting is a northern species that reaches S-Europe only late autumn/winter (so probably it is the same in Canary islands) etc. etc., but I think it would make sense to include such information also in this book so there would be less need to use also other resources. And as I said - it's not like there is space issues (Bunting page is one of fullest with ~1/5 of page blank).

So my conclusion is that yes I find the book very nice and will use it during future trips (hopefully) to Canaries, but there are some small issues that could have made the book even better (at least for me). :t:

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