Collins bird guide 2nd edition reviews

The single most popular bird guide, with some of the finest illustrations available. Click to have a closer look. Select version. Images Additional images. About this book May : Please note that in the publisher updated the second edition.

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Birds of Chew Valley Lake. The app then provides a list of species that fit that criteria. The app includes the option to keep a life list and to create any others lists. The lists are arranged in the three tiers, just like the rest of the app. One suggestion I have for any future app updates is for the app to total the number of species on each list and to let users add a date for when they see a particular bird.

This is the family groups page from my Germany List. Awesome review — Looks great, will keep it in mind if I brave apple products again. Great review. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account.

You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Here is the home page with all the family groupings: Click on a family group — this takes you to the second tier of the app. For woodpeckers, the entry reads: All but the aberrant Wryneck specialists in climbing and excavating nest holes in vertical tree trunks.

With the other thread on 10 pages I thought a discussion of what it's actually like deserved a new thread. The old edition was widely lauded as the best field guide to birds ever produced; well, not any more! This new edition has been extensively re-set, rewritten and re-illustrated. The plates, by-and-large, are crisper and more saturated than the original. This works well and is an advance, but a handful of illustrations look a bit too dark male harriers look too dark and not insufficiently bluish for example.

With so much re-shuffling and moving around, despite the greater coverage, many plates are less crowded and the illustrations significantly larger.

This has also allowed space for additional illustrations esp. Grebes in flight are shown. Pelicans re-done. The owls have been largely re-illustrated and Pharaoh Owl is split. Better still the American passerines have been re-illustrated by Killian Mullarney. Many of the warblers have been re-illustrated in part or in full and most are split. Splits inc. Most of the phyloscs have been beautifully re-illustrated. However the text notes that the Great-grey complex could well be split into species, but that the taxonomy is not yet clear and needs more study.

Masked Booby and the list of Accidentals has been updated. There seems to be a gap next to the rarer snipe that suggests missing illustrations. However, presumably to gain space, some species have been relegated from the main text to the appendix on introduced species e. The text has obviously been extensively reworked to fit the new layout expanded and additional species armchair and otherwise that have been added. Doubtless they will be discovered with use. The captions on the plates have also been reviewed partly I suspect as there is now more space!

Another big change is the use of larger scale maps for species confined to the extreme SE, SW and the Atlantic islands. Also, of great use to the myopic, the index is much easier to read; a small point, but one that indicates the attention to detail in this revision. Essentially, this is a brilliant re-working of an already iconic guide. Only the rank beginner, terminally un-ambitious or incurious birder failed to get the original edition.

Similarly, only those lacking these traits might forgo the advantages of this new edition. Go out buy it, wait a while and then buy the large edition … and count yourself lucky to be living in Europe and birding at such a time. Yes, I liked it a lot! Last edited: Dec 24, Since its publication in , the book rapidly became THE standard field guide for anyone birding in the UK and Europe.

As taxonomic changes continue to be announced on an almost weekly basis, and as the knowledge of identifying some complex species and plumages increases, it was inevitable that the guide would need to be up-dated at some point. I found this a particular problem on a recent trip abroad, trying to look up species I was not familiar with, and struggling to find them in the book. It is worth bearing with - you soon get used to it.