The ID Handbook of European Birds - A Book Review

I am an absolute sucker for a beautiful hardback book with amazing images and the two-volume edition of The ID Handbook of European Birds just released as an English translation by Princeton University Press certainly meets that criteria.

The books are written by renowned Dutch ornithologist Nils van Duivendijk with images supplied by Marc Guyt and Agami (images) and are exactly as described, a handbook, a detailed guide to the identification of the birds of Europe. The extensive and impressive work has necessarily been split in to two volumes as is becoming traditional for detailed reference material regarding the birds of the Western Palearctic. The first volume covers non-passerines and the second the passerines.

There is a tradition dating back to the earliest days of ornithology and in fact all aspects of zoology and botany that identification plates and images were the work of talented artists. These highly skilled observers of physiology were able to accurately portray the subtle nuances of a species identifying features. Skilled artists were able to draw together different plumages and stages of life cycle into a series of line drawings  or illustrations. Such images were works of art in and of themselves.

With the advent of digital photography and its exponential increase in the quality of images produced means that photographic images now  provide a more realistic view of the subject in question.

Van Duivendijk has gathered together an incredible range of 5,500 images of 733 European species of bird. All the images are of exceptional quality  both of colour and clarity with perfect lighting and contrast. The accompanying text teases out the key morphological features and details differences between seasonal plumages.

Rather than focus on a single image of the bird the handbook presents a series of images from different angles to highlight the key points. Each bird is cut out to remove the clutter of the background and allows the reader to focus on the salient features. Care is taken to explore easy to confuse species although there are better books out there for this purpose such as The Helm Guide to Bird Identification.

 

The handbook focuses entirely on identification leaving texts like the Birds of the Western Palearctic to cover the information on species distribution, population size, ecology and behaviour. The books know their place and fulfil their role admirably.

The books themselves are well bound with a sturdy spine and solid hard back. Good quality paper helps do the images justice with the page backgrounds contrasting with the birds well. I do feel however the 2 volume set would have benefitted from a slip case but this is not a deal breaker and would have pushed the reasonable price higher.

The Collins Bird Guide will always be my go to identification guide but this handbook will most definitely augment it and it is a book I will lovingly go through looking at every page and will flick through with regularity. 

The ID Handbook of European Birds is available from all good bookstores.