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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Swissboy" data-source="post: 1631875" data-attributes="member: 4926">Got my copy todayMy copy of this fabulous series arrived today. It is one more stunning volume, and together with volume 10 it has nominally the highest number of pages (896). Actually, the last three pages of the present volume are empty. So the number 896 is somewhat of a joke! Not that I would prefer quantity over quality; but here, both seem to be ideally combined. I particularly love the large number of great photos. Of course, I have not had time yet to go into the text much. Mostly, I checked for printing errors or missing pages, just in case (and before I discard the voluminous wrapping). This provided a good opportunity to get a first optical impression. And impressed I am! Sure, there are some minor things that could have been done better on a few plates. But, overall, I very much like most of them.To start the nit-picking: I think the weakest plate are the oxpeckers by H. Burn. There are a couple more plates by her, among them #40 that I don't particularly like. But there are several by her, that I do like a lot. It's certainly not that I would not like her style, it's more how much time she spent doing a plate, I think. Looking at Chris Rose's plates for a comparison, it's clear why he spent four months on them, as Hidde mentioned in post #2.To my taste, many corvids look a bit too purplish on the plates by D. Quinn, and the legs of the two choughs on plate 36 are a bit too pale. I presume that's because skins were used extensively?On plate 34, the tail of the magpie, but only ssp pica, looks a bit short. Seems like B. Small had to make sure the tail would still fit onto the page.The only typo I stumbled over by accident: on the list of plates plate 37 should read page 624 instead of 654.But, once again, this is all minor stuff as far as I'm concerned. And I can't see how anyone could want such a book only in electronic form. At the very least, the monitor would have to have a 22" diagonal, thus far from what today's mobile kindle types offer. But then, I admit to be a bibliophile. If it were merely for the information, I'd agree that an electronic version would be much more easily updated.</blockquote>

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