Worldwide Guide in 1 Book? (1 Viewer)

BADCATZ · Nov 18, 2009

I own a copy of the Collins Bird Guide, considered one of the best thier is. Which obviously covers Britain and Europe.

However, im looking for a Book which covers the rest of the world. Im not likely to travel the rest of the world you understand but id like a Comprehensive Book that has it all. With the kind of quality we get from Collins.

Any ideas please as to what might enhance my Reference Library,,

Thankyou

:cat:

dalat · Nov 18, 2009

I asked a similar question as well not so long time ago when I got back into birding. The answer i got was "Handbook of the Birds of the World". Sounded easy to me at first, but I got a quite a shock when I realised what this actually is

Richard Klim · Nov 18, 2009

BADCATZ said:
I own a copy of the Collins Bird Guide, considered one of the best there is. Which obviously covers Britain and Europe.

However, im looking for a Book which covers the rest of the world. Im not likely to travel the rest of the world you understand but id like a Comprehensive Book that has it all. With the kind of quality we get from Collins.

Collins Bird Guide describes 722 species in 400 pages.

IOC currently lists 10,347 world species, so a world guide of equivalent quality would run to nearly 6,000 pages!
Could be a bit of a handful in the field...

Richard

stonechat1 · Nov 18, 2009

FG worldwide

BADCATZ said:
[...]
However, im looking for a Book which covers the rest of the world. Im not likely to travel the rest of the world you understand but id like a Comprehensive Book that has it all. With the kind of quality we get from Collins.
[...]

There is no book which your expectations on the market. Nowhere.

HBW will be a good a good replacement with his 14 volumes therewhile,
each for 175.75 GBP

Regards,
Roman

Swissboy · Nov 18, 2009

stonechat1 said:
There is no book which your expectations on the market. Nowhere.

HBW will be a good a good replacement with his 14 volumes therewhile,
each for 175.75 GBP

Regards,
Roman

That could certainly be shortened considerably if the idea were to just have a book to identify the species. The 14 volumes (so far) of HBW run at around 500 very large pages on average. That will be around 8000 pages in the end. Not to say anything about the costs.

Richard is probably not too far off with the 6000 pages as those would be quite a bit smaller for a "FG". So that would be the situation where an electronic version would help.

jedigrant · Nov 18, 2009

dalat said:
I asked a similar question as well not so long time ago when I got back into birding. The answer i got was "Handbook of the Birds of the World". Sounded easy to me at first, but I got a quite a shock when I realised what this actually is

LOL. Yeah, I can see how that would be a surprise.

If you're just talking about identification, the best you can do is get the best field guide for each individual region. But just a warning, most will pale in comparison with the Collins guide, some extremely so.

I'm really curious now - what would be the least number of field guides one would need to have coverage of almost every species, say 90%? I must admit, I'm not versed in the field guide options for Africa and Asia. But here's a first crack at it:

Western Palearctic - Collins

North America - Sibley. You may even be able to omit this region, since the widespread and migratory species would mostly have coverage in other guides. But there's probably enough exclusive species to necessitate inclusion.

Central America - I think you could get most of the species by sandwiching the region with Howell's Mexico guide in the north, and then the Panama one in the south

South America - the 2 volume guide to the birds of Northern South America would cover a lot. But if I remember correctly, it doesn't include most of Peru, so you would almost have to add in the latest Peruvian guide. And maybe the new guide for Brazil as well. Not sure how many species that would leave out

Sub-Sahara Africa - ??

Australia - pick the best one of the several available

Asia - no idea how to split it up.

birdboybowley · Nov 18, 2009

Asia..eek! You'd have to take guides to India (Birds of the Subcontinent - not a great book with the worst taxominc order I've ever seen), SE Asia (the Robson guide - again not great with an equally crappy taxonomy), Borneo & Sumatra etc, Birds of East Asia... and these won't even begin to cover any of Indonesia, Philippines, PNG, the Pacific Islands....blimey you'd need to take an extra person just to carry the books!

birdboybowley · Nov 18, 2009

Africa - the Helm guides to East and West Africa would be necessities, but it's a shame they haven't done one for Southern Africa yet, most odd

Microtus · Nov 19, 2009

Birds of Africa South of the Sahara by Sinclair and Ryan covers the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa. I don't know it stacks up, as I've never been to Africa, but I think it's a nice book.

birdboybowley · Nov 19, 2009

Yeah the Sinclair and Ryan is pretty much the only SA book worth using for the area, what I meant was it's just a shame Helm haven't done a guide to the region in the same vein as their excellent EA guide.

stonechat1 · Nov 19, 2009

jedigrant said:
[...]
Australia - pick the best one of the several available
[...]

Two weeks ago I bought the Field Guide to Australian Birds by Michael Morcombe.
http://www.nhbs.com/field_guide_to_australian_birds_tefno_113495.html

But what a frustration! The drawings in the second part (Nests and Eggs) look as an 4 year old kid had made them.
When you see the drawing of Motacilla lugens you even can not recognise that it shows a Wagtail! Pity that it´s equal for the most of australian shorebirds and all the herons and egrets. |8.|

Edward · Nov 19, 2009

jedigrant said:
I'm really curious now - what would be the least number of field guides one would need to have coverage of almost every species, say 90%? I must admit, I'm not versed in the field guide options for Africa and Asia. But here's a first crack at it:

South America - the 2 volume guide to the birds of Northern South America would cover a lot. But if I remember correctly, it doesn't include most of Peru, so you would almost have to add in the latest Peruvian guide. And maybe the new guide for Brazil as well. Not sure how many species that would leave out

To cover South America in as few books as possible it would be best to have Ridgely and Tudor's Field Guide to the Birds of South America: Passerines
and then Collins Field Guide to the Birds of South America: Non-Passerines
by Jorge R Roderiguez Mata, Francisco Erize and Maurice Rumboll

For Australia: Pizzey and Knight is my favourite.

birdboybowley · Nov 19, 2009

For Oz I prefer the Simpson and Day....

Swissboy · Nov 19, 2009

stonechat1 said:
Two weeks ago I bought the Field Guide to Australian Birds by Michael Morcombe.
http://www.nhbs.com/field_guide_to_australian_birds_tefno_113495.html

But what a frustration! The drawings in the second part (Nests and Eggs) look as an 4 year old kid had made them.
....

I know, but it is the favorite of a surprising number of birders in Australia.

To me, like Edward, Pizzey & Knight is also my favorite.

jedigrant · Nov 19, 2009

Edward said:
To cover South America in as few books as possible it would be best to have Ridgely and Tudor's Field Guide to the Birds of South America: Passerines
and then Collins Field Guide to the Birds of South America: Non-Passerines
by Jorge R Roderiguez Mata, Francisco Erize and Maurice Rumboll

Oh, yeah, I had forgotten about that non-passerine guide. So that covers the entirety of South America with just two books. And with the Africa book mentioned earlier, that makes it 8 books before we start talking about Asia. So I'm thinking that with 12 or so guides, you could probably have coverage of 90% of the world's birds.

BADCATZ · Nov 22, 2009

Richard Klim said:
Collins Bird Guide describes 722 species in 400 pages.

IOC currently lists 10,347 world species, so a world guide of equivalent quality would run to nearly 6,000 pages!
Could be a bit of a handful in the field...

Richard

So id better clear a space on the Bookshelf:-O

I think il Buy local field guides as and when i visit new Locations,,

Cheers All

:cat:

NicoleB · Nov 22, 2009

BADCATZ said:
I think il Buy local field guides as and when i visit new Locations,,

Good Luck on that one, depending on where you go

Especially when looking for the language you can read

But I hear you on the various books you need.

I started birding in Hungary and all I got was a Collins guide in German.
It helped me, yes, but it didn't come close to what I needed.
Plus, it was only a field guide and either didn't show me the bird in flight OR it did show the bird in flight when I was looking for one perched on a tree or such. Sigh.

Now, here in Egypt I got a small Collins Gem birds and one called "Birds of Egypt".
Neither one perfect, but so far they helped me get on.

With the ones the guides didn't cover - the wonderful helpers over here at the forum did

Jacana · Dec 7, 2009

you can do central america in one guide with the collins guide (Ber Van Perlo) which is ok

dunno what there is for the caribbean on the other hand

Worldwide Guide in 1 Book? (1 Viewer)

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BADCATZ

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