Pat French asked me this question, and I thought it might be worth sharing
it with tweeters.

"You mentioned a book about birds of Russia by Knystautas. I assume you
are referring to _Collins Guide to the Birds of Russia_. I've wondered
several times if having a book that showed the birds of Russia would be
handy for identifying birds who turned left when they should have turned
right on their way south and ended up on the wrong side of the ocean. What
is your recommendation for a good book to have on the shelf when you need
to identify a Rustic Bunting at your feeder?"

Pat, the Knystautus book is a nice book, but I wouldn't call it a great
book. It does illustrate a lot of the birds of Russia in good color photos
and is worth having for that reason alone, but it doesn't illustrate all of
them. Most of the illustrations of passerines are of birds at the nest,
thus bright-plumaged adults, while it is the immatures that are more likely
to show up over here. Also, the text is very brief, scarcely treating many
species and emphasizing where they occur in Russia, geographically and
ecologically, and a bit of their natural history; nothing about
identification. Still a worthwhile book to have but not for the purpose
you mention above.

For that purpose, I recommend (a) a good European field guide (the one by
Lars Olsson is highly recommended by some, although I don't happen to have
a copy), and (b) A Field Guide to the Rare Birds of Britain and Europe, by
Ian Lewington, Per Alstrom, and Peter Colston. This *is* a great book,
with superb illustrations and text on many species that are distributed
around the periphery of Europe, including, of cours, both Asia and North
America. The paintings of NA birds are better than in *any* field guide
for this country, and a whole lot of Asian birds that might be vagrants on
this side of the Pacific are shown in equally fine and beautiful detail.
The shorebird paintings make me drool (you probably wouldn't even need that
book on Pacific Northwest shorebirds if you had this book). A number of
plates allow comparisons of common North American species better than any
in our own field guides. Got the picture?

The Rare Birds book shows all the pipits of the Far East, for
example--Red-throated, Pechora, and Olive-backed, while Knystautus shows
only the Olive-backed, also "Buff-bellied" (= American). Since some of the
vagrants (Rustic Bunting, for example) are fairly common in Europe, you'd
need the European guide as well. Hope this is of some help, and I hope it
was OK that I shared your question with the rest of tweeters.

Dennis Paulson phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416