Hi Tweeters:
After I studied all the postings about the Pink-footed Geese including
the photos that people had sent to Tweeters (Thanks Everyone-the
Tweeters help was great!), Charlie Wright and I
headed to the coast. I grabbed a number of field guides from my
ever-growing stack of bird books and went seeking the Pink-foot.
The best pictures and text: BIRDS OF EUROPE, by Svensson and Grant,
publ. 1999. The paintings of both the Bean Goose and the Pink-footed
Goose were on the same page and showed the color of the two species
very well. Text in this book is on the page opposite for
user-friendly reading. When I got to the big field at the end of K
Street in Hoquiam, I really studied those Pink-footed field marks that
I had
observed in the book, especially the bill shape and color (pink on the
bill), the back color vs. the flank color (flanks are darker brown,
than the silvery-gray back), and the amount of white on the tail with
more white in tail bands on Pink-foot vs the Bean Goose. Wow, did
those two birds in the wild match the field marks in the guide for
Pink-footed Goose.
The Birds of Europe is a terrific paperback, and I am surprised at the
number of birds in it that appear in WA state. Some time I may count
the species in it, and then count the number of those that have
appeared in Washington state. No kidding, it may be as much as 50%.
This field guide is available from ABA books, and I'm sure you could
get it from Flora and Fauna in Seattle (I think that's where I ordered
it). Cost is $29.95 in the ABA catalog.
Second best guide: Good text but poor pictures of Pink-foot are in
the paperback guide, WATERFOWL: An ID guide to ducks, geese, and swans
of the world by Madge and Burn. Publ. 1988. Cost in ABA is $27.95.
Probably available from Flora and Fauna. Their picture of the
Pink-foot does show the flowing neck feathers better than the Birds of
Europe. It was kinda laughable to read the wonderful text, and then
look at the paintings in the same book. They didn't match. But this
is a good book of ALL THE WATERFOWL IN THE WORLD. That's handy to
have.
Birds of Europe is a nice, compact guide that you could conceivable
carry w/ you. Waterfowl is bigger and stays back in the car.
Yours, Carol Schulz
DesMoines, WA
Below are some past reviews that were on Tweeters about BIRDS OF
EUROPE:
----------------------------------------------------
>From Dennis Paulson 6-5-01
I could say much more in praise of this European guide, but I
recommend you
get a copy for yourself, even if you don't plan a trip to Europe, just
to
have a copy of the real paradigm for bird field guides.

That's my 2 cents worth.

Dennis

Dennis Paulson, Director phone 253-879-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax 253-879-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail
dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416
http://www.ups.edu/biology/museum/museum.html


----- Original Message -----
From: Daniel Bastaja
To: wkbirds at yahoogroups.com ; Fraser Valley Birds ; Intbird
Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2003 12:48 AM
Subject: RE: [wkbirds] Re: Field Guides for Britain

Hi. This is Daniel Bastaja posting for Wed. Mar. 26th, 2003. I would
like to comment on the European Field Guides. I have both versions
(field guide and large hardcover edition) of the 1998
Mullarney,Svensson,Zetterstrom and Grant "Birds of Europe", published
by Collins. Like Peter said, the guide has been very well reviewed and
some have said that it is the best field guide ever published. Yet one
of the first times I used the book, I found what I consider to be a
rather serious shortcoming.

In the field guide gull section, I noticed that the underside of the
wingtip pattern is not shown clearly, or sometimes not shown at all,
in a lot of the larger gull species. As gull identification is
difficult, and sometimes depends on subtleties of colour and pattern,
and the large gulls are being constantly re-formed into new races,
sub-species and species, this to me is a grevious omission. I noticed
the problem recently on a trip to Holland. I was in the port of
Rotterdam, looking at Lesser Black-backed Gulls. I saw several adults
that I believed to be the very dark Baltic race (which looks
dramatically different than the paler western European race) but I
wasn?t absolutely sure because the mantle colour wasn?t quite as black
as it shows for that race in the field guide. As well, the guide
indicated that this dark race should be normally seen much further
east than where I was. I carefully noted the mantle and wingtip colour
and pattern and also noted the pattern on the underside of the wing. I
was very disappointed when I looked in the guide and saw that the
underside of the wing for the Baltic race was not shown at all.
Considering that the topside of the bird looks so much different from
the topside of the paler race, I was amazed that they wouldn?t compare
the wingtips from below. The underside of the wing is shown on the
pale race but only in a tiny, tiny illustration in the corner of the
page comparing the bird in flight to a Herring Gull. This illustration
is wholly inadequate for looking at detail or subtleties.

Another comment I can make. The version of this guide that has a black
cover with a picture of a Barn Owl on it is a very big, hard cover
book, wholly unsuitable for use as a field guide. I mention this
because many of the internet sites that sell this book (eg: ABA Sales)
DO NOT make that clear. They sometimes refer to the book as ?large
format? but, to me, that is not clear. What does that mean? Does it
mean the illustrations are larger than in a normal field guide? Does
it mean it?s somewhat larger than a typical field guide, in the same
format as say, the Smithsonian Handbook field guide series? The book
is very expensive and I?m sure some people (like me) bought it
thinking they were buying a field guide only to discover that they
bought a massive hard cover book that is utterly useless for the
field.
Regards,
Daniel S. Bastaja
e-mail: dan at calivita.com

-----Original Message-----
From: petermciver [mailto:petermciver at hotmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2003 6:56 AM
To: wkbirds at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [wkbirds] Re: Field Guides for Britain

--- In wkbirds at yahoogroups.com, "sharonlelliott <lelliott at t...>"
<lelliott at t...> wrote:
> We are planning a trip to England and are asking if anyone knows
the
> name and author of a good paperback field guide for that area.
> Please let me
> know. Thanks.
Hi,
I have been away for a few weeks so I hope the following is in time
to be useful.
I possess several field guides for European birds of which my
favorites are the 1995 Collins Birds of Britain and Europe by
Heinzel,Fitter and Parslow and Lars Jonsson's "Birds of Europe",both
very fine books.The 1998 Mullarney,Svensson,Zetterstrom and
Grant "Birds of Europe",of which there are ,I believe 2 Editions,one
also published by Collins,has been very well reviewed and referred to
as the best field guide ever published-this is the one I would
buy,although I have not seen a copy.The Peterson guide,published
first many years ago, set the standard for field guides in Europe but
does not contain the range of illustrations of the previously
mentioned books,which are available through the LA Audobon Society
Bookstore,Amazon and probably Indigo/Chapters/Coles
Regards,
Peter