This guide describes and illustrates 472 key species. It includes distribution maps and concise text describing key identification features. The main objective of this book is to help identify quickly and accurately in the field, rather than serve as a scientific reference work. Therefore, the conventional species line-up has been abandoned in order to illustrate externally similar birds next to each other where possible for easy comparison; at the same time the author has tried not to abandon the conventional line-up completely.