This innovative guide is an essential addition to the library of any serious birder. It accurately describes every key detail of every plumage of all 900 species that have ever occurred in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East - the region known to all birdwatchers as the Western Palearctic. Its level of detail is unprecedented for a book of this size.
This is a guide with a difference. It has no colour plates or illustrations, but instead its unique selling point is that for every species the detailed text lists the key characters of each recognizable plumage, including male, female, immature, juvenile, all subspecies and all other variations. This level of detail includes, for example, all eleven forms of Canada Goose and all nine forms of Yellow Wagtail known in the region. In the past such in-depth detail has only been available in huge multi-volume tomes. This book allows birders to take this information into the field for the first time.
Nils van Duivendijk is an ornithologist and author based in Woerden, The Netherlands. He is a regular contributor to Dutch Birding and other esteemed ornithological journals.
Customer Reviews:
Nitpicking
by Willie in United Kingdom
An excellent aid to bird identification- complements the "must have" reference books viz " The Ringers Bible" and Collins Bird Guide. One very small irritation is that although it refers to the Grey Phalarope in the index, I could not find it on the specified page 119.