Europe's Birds: An Identification Guide (1 Viewer)

[Doctor Twitchings]

Just announced, this is going to be another potentially exciting book in the WildGuides series of books. It is the follow up to Britain's Birds by Rob Hume, Robert Still, Andy Swash, Hugh Harrop and David Tipling and is due to be published in May 2021.

It covers 914 species over 608 pages!

http://www.wildsounds.com/products/6457-Europes-Birds-An-Identification-Guide.shtml

 

[aeshna5]

Sounds like a must have. The 2nd edition of the UK guide is superb!

Also as a general naturalist the whole series is superb whether you're into dragonflies, butterflies, orchids, mammals, reptiles, ferns, etc.

 

[Nicola Main]

Oh I need to get this!

 

[John Cantelo]

There's no question that this will rapidly become a 'must-buy' guide. I was told this was in preparation at the Bird Fair soon after the publication of the original Britain's Birds book but the revised second edition of that guide seems to have taken precedence. Rob Hume mentioned a European guide was in preparation in his virtual Bird Fair lecture so it's good to have it 'firmed up' with a date (although we all know how unreliable publisher's dates are!). I hope Chris Batty is still used as a consultant as he did a brilliant job of helping to revise the earlier book. Covering 914 species in over 3,800 photographs and 608 pages means it will be tricky to squeeze everything in and still maintain standards but if any team can do it it's Wildguides. Personally, I'd have preferred to omit extreme rarities for either a more portable book and/or more detailed one. I hope that they will be able to make full use of the information in the forthcoming European Bird Atlas in drawing up the maps (the old books only weakness).

 

[John Cantelo]

A quick calculation suggests that the book will be covering 45% more species (914 vs 631), in only 5% more pages (32pp) and a mere 8.5% more photos (3,500 vs 3,800). It's going to be interesting to see what compromises have to be made to squeeze everything in!

 

[avifauna]

I hope that they will be able to make full use of the information in the forthcoming European Bird Atlas in drawing up the maps (the old books only weakness).

From WildSounds presentation: Includes 540 maps, prepared in association with BirdLife International
That is not the EBBA2 data to be released in the Lynx book any day now.