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

[jurek]

And I think it is a coffee-table book titled field guide for the purpose of making people justify for themselves buying it.

 

[John Cantelo]

I know what you mean but somehow I don't think this would be the first book a 'newbie' would plump for.

I'd always advise a beginner based in the UK & Ireland to start off with a book that only deals with British birds. At the moment by far the best choices are, I believe, the two WildGuides books "British Birds: A pocket Guide" and "Britain's Birds" (although it's a pity that the projected British birds only version of the "Collins Guide" never materialised). If they're in Europe or plan to spend time there then arguably "Europe's Birds" is a better and less confusing choice than the "Collins Guide".

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[Essex Tern]

I'd always advise a beginner based in the UK & Ireland to start off with a book that only deals with British birds. At the moment by far the best choices are, I believe, the two WildGuides books "British Birds: A pocket Guide" and "Britain's Birds" (although it's a pity that the projected British birds only version of the "Collins Guide" never materialised). If they're in Europe or plan to spend time there then arguably "Europe's Birds" is a better and less confusing choice than the "Collins Guide".

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British birds is in app form though, so still a good recommendation if a new birder likes that idea.

 

[mummymonkey]

The main issue I have with the maps is that it looks like every species can be found down the west coast of Norway.

 

[kuzeycem]

From what I can tell, the page structure and photo organisation is not as good as it was on Britain's Birds, something that is obvious when comparing the Dunlin plates of both books: on EB the photos look inferior, the lighting between the images is more varied and that wavy background is kind of distracting.
The maps look bad from a Turkish standpoint too, though I guess I should be thankful the book covers Turkey at all!

 

[John Cantelo]

From what I can tell, the page structure and photo organisation is not as good as it was on Britain's Birds, something that is obvious when comparing the Dunlin plates of both books: on EB the photos look inferior, the lighting between the images is more varied and that wavy background is kind of distracting.
The maps look bad from a Turkish standpoint too, though I guess I should be thankful the book covers Turkey at all!

Since you mention it, here are the plates from Britain's Birds (left) and Europe's Birds .....

 

[John Cantelo]

Having another trawl through the book raises a few more points. I think the publishers missed an opportunity by not covering the same area as the Collins Guide (i.e. including North Africa and parts of the Near East). I estimate that only c35 additional species would need to be included as many are already covered in the guide as vagrants (many in good detail). In practical terms, deleting or reducing coverage of extreme rarities to the area (fewer than a dozen or two say) would make no difference to 99% of users. In a similar vein, I find leaving that part of Africa shown on the map as blank rather irritating. Why not show what birds are there?