There’s a lot I could write, even in a simple introduction, about the new Princeton University Press / WILDGuides book Britain’s Birds:An Identification Guide to the Birds of Britain and Ireland by Rob Hume, Robert Still, Andy Swash, Hugh Harrop and David Tipling.
I could point out that it provides “comprehensive coverage of every bird recorded in Britain and Ireland.”
I could expand with the fact that it is the “only photographic guide to show all plumages likely to be encountered” in the region.
I could even go on to note that it contains “more than 3,200 superb colour photographs carefully selected to show key identification features.”
Or I could simply recommend that you take two minutes and thirty-three seconds to view this lovely video that the publisher has produced which tells you all of this and more – all accompanied by a host of images from the book itself.
January 3, 2017 @ 01:45
This book is, in my view, the most pleasingly executed photo-guide to birds yet published. In terms of design and aspiration, it replaces Crossley the benchmark in the sub-genre. However, it has been widely criticised for a number of errors mainly concerning the claimed age/sex of the images but also a handful that are incorrectly identified at a species level (e.g. imm. Little Ringed Plover/Ringed Plover & imm. Serin/Citril Finch). The maps are also less accurate than they should be (and compare poorly to the similarly sized ones in the recent BTO guide to Britain’s birds). So if it’s not a priority wait for a corrected 2nd edition (it has been a surprise best seller for the small publishing firm behind the project). Better still wait for the sister volume covering the whole of Europe (something I was assured was in the process of being developed at the UK Bird Fair in 2016).