Back when I took my first class on birding from Mark Garland (at the time, he was with the Audubon Naturalist Society in Bethesda, MD), he told us that we should get a good field guide, and that it didn’t matter too much which one, because eventually we’d have a large collection.
“Silly,” I thought. After all the birds look the same all the time, don’t they? One book covering the US should last a lifetime.
Of course you know what happened: time passed, and somehow I found myself with three-going-on-four shelves of field guides and other books about birds and birding. Partly this is because I have a habit of forgetting to pack a guide when I travel and thus have to buy one when I arrive, and partly – well, partly it’s the same reason you have more than one field guide. I can’t help myself. They follow me home and I have to keep them.
In the case of the Princeton Field Guides Birds of Europe, second edition, I’ll disclose up front that the publisher gave me a review copy of this book, which as I’m sure you know, is standard practice. Regardless, I’m happy to have this volume to add to my collection.
The book itself is lovely. It’s a nice, compact size – easy to pack for travel should you remember to do so, or to fit in a daypack or large pocket for a day in the field. The cover is striking – black background, with bright colored colored illustrations and sharp, clear text (see left). It’s printed on heavy, coated paper, making the inside illustrations sharp and crisp as well.
The authors pack a lot of information into a compact format. Kudos to the typographer, because the book is easily readable despite the density. The written description is accompanied by small range maps at the bottom of the page, and annotated illustrations on the facing page. Initially, I thought the illustrations were overly small, but soon realized the advantage of being able to look at several similar species side-by-side, such as the swifts on page 237. The illustrations also highlight field marks, particularly the differential ones, and include notes such as “not attracted to urban areas” or “often in large noisy flocks in town” which are helpful for identification.
The text identifies each species by common and scientific name, followed by brief notes on size and habitat. A more detailed physical description follows, noting the field marks and including notes about behavior. Should I ever be chasing an Ural Owl (Strix uralensis), I have been cautioned “Very aggressive when young about to leave nest and can attack intruder fiercely; keep your eyes fixed on the parents if you stumble on an inhabited nest, and leave area quickly!” (p. 224) The final section describes the voice and its variations.
One note: originally published in Europe, the guide’s size designations are metric. If you use English measurements as we do in the US, and aren’t good at conversions on the fly (so to speak), you might want to note on the endpapers that 1 cm = 0.39 in, or take a minute to note the equivalents in the margins for your target species.
Birds of Europe: Second Edition / Text and Maps by Lars Svensson; Illustrations and Captions by Killian Mullarney and Dan Zetterström. Princeton University Press, 2010 (Paperback). 416 pp. 3,500+ color illus. 848 maps. $29.95. ISBN 978-0-691-14392-7
Publisher’s website: Svensson, L., Zetterström, D., Mullarney, K.: Birds of Europe: Second Edition.
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Sounds like a good guide to have.
Will def. have a look into that when we return home (one of these days).
Hey, Nicole – what guide do you use in Egypt?
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