• 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.

RFI British and European Field Guide (1 Viewer)

pandachris

Well-known member
I should have thought about this before Christmas.

Although I've been lucky enough to do some fairly serious birdwatching on 4 continents so far, I usually consider myself to be a fairly crap birder. I certainly don't keep very up to date. I've been accessing this forum for over a year and it has become increasingly clear that there are birds knocking about that I didn't know existed - particularly new species created by splits. Are there any field guides available, covering Europe and the British Isles that are reasonably current, or at least update the various volumes that I have that are at least 10 years old?
 
pandachris said:
I should have thought about this before Christmas.

Although I've been lucky enough to do some fairly serious birdwatching on 4 continents so far, I usually consider myself to be a fairly crap birder. I certainly don't keep very up to date. I've been accessing this forum for over a year and it has become increasingly clear that there are birds knocking about that I didn't know existed - particularly new species created by splits. Are there any field guides available, covering Europe and the British Isles that are reasonably current, or at least update the various volumes that I have that are at least 10 years old?
The following recent threads all seemed to agree that Collins is the definitive and most up-to-date guide available:
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=72348
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=71489
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=69939
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=68766

There's a lot of splitting going on and even though it is widely regarded as the best guide, Collins does not have all of them shown as such. So it does not have fully separate entries for Caspian Gull, Iberian Chiffchaff, Black Scoter etc but it DOES always at least have treatments of the sub-species pre-split which are just as good. And of course our own BOU are slower to split than other authorities so some species are official in Holland, for example, but not here.

Graham
 
Try the sales at Waterstones

pandachris said:
Thanks Graham

Looks like I'll be checking on Amazon, then I can go through and find out what I've missed.

The hard back A5 edition is at half-price at our Waterstone's in Peterborough if that's any help to you... :news:
 
Worth noting that a revised edition of Collins is on the way, ie, Mr Mullarney et al reportedly working on it. Don't know when it's due .... maybe August for the Birdfair?

Sean
 
dogfish said:
Worth noting that a revised edition of Collins is on the way, ie, Mr Mullarney et al reportedly working on it. Don't know when it's due .... maybe August for the Birdfair?

Sean

Nice one! :bounce:
 
Chris Monk said:
Nice one! :bounce:

Thanks, Sean and Chris. I'll check our locals Waterstoneses this weekend and then watch out for the new edition later this year. We can justify two, I reckon.
 
Warning! This thread is more than 17 years ago old.
It's likely that no further discussion is required, in which case we recommend starting a new thread. If however you feel your response is required you can still do so.

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top