Product Description

It has always been notoriously difficult to identify birds by their call or song and complicated and baffling sonograms don't give much help. Yet bird sounds are a critical aspect of accurate identification, with many species camouflaged, skulking or flying overhead against the sun making simple visual identification almost impossible at times. In woodland, for example, the majority of encounters with birds are by sound alone. Furthermore, some species are secretive by nature, and their call or song can be the only way of locating and accurately identifying them!This book is a major breakthrough in that it not only describes bird sound in a simple and understandable way, but also includes two accompanying bird song and call CDs, providing all the detail you need in order to confidently identify 200 different species over a wide variety of habitats.Each species is fully illustrated - showing details such as sexual variance and flight - by Brin Edwards, an award-winning artist with a distinctive and contemporary style. All birds are described with full identification detail and have examples of habitat and distribution as well as those all-important calls and song. Written with both beginners and the more experience birder in mind, this major new title really is the only field guide you will ever need.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #55891 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 2
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

About the Author
Dave Farrow lives in Norwich, England, his adopted home after growing up on the outskirts of London. A keen birder from a very young age, at the age of six, he acquired the AA Readers' Digest book of Birds as a Christmas present, a book which displayed species distribution maps, and inspired him to travel. He made his first overseas birding trip at the age of seventeen, and to date has travelled in sixty-eight countries. Dave began his current career as a tour leader with the travel company Explore, before graduating to leading birding tours for Birdquest in the mid-'90s. He has led tours on all seven continents, although has a special love of the Far East. When he is not busy with tour work, he indulges his passion for sound-recording and has built up a collection of recordings from around the world, with a particularly large number from Asia.

Customer Reviews

Very good guide, shame about the hyperbole.
Compared to its most obvious competitor, Geoff Sample's Collins Field Guide, this guide has recordings of more species (200 v 153ish), almost twice the number of pages in the book, illustrations, and yet is cheaper. The recordings are isolated, not synthesised into a soundscape as the Collins Guide and are not announced. On the whole I think this is the better method, though both have their merits. The auther has included painstaking attempts at transcriptions of the songs & calls. I find them difficult to read, but they do seem to be a pretty good attempt at actually getting the vocalisations down on paper.
Why not 5 stars? Well, though this is a very good guide, it is certainly not "the only field guide you will ever need" as it claims to be. The species accounts in the book are actually surprisingly good, but only species which appear on the cds are described, so for example, Tengmalm's Owl is included but Short-eared Owl is not. This compares to the Collins Guide where (British) species which are not present on the cds still get an account in the book (though this is limited to a description of their songs/calls). There are a few species which are pretty irrelevant from a purely British point of view (Grey Headed Woodpecker is another), but this isn't just a British guide, and almost everything you are likely to hear in the British countryside is present.
Some of the songs/calls sound a little 'different' to my ears, and I wonder if they are recordings of European rather than British birds. Dave Farrow is certainly active all over the world, and the other contributors all have rather 'continental' names.
On the whole though, an extremely good guide and good value for money. I have no hesitation recommending it.

A FIELD GUIDE TO THE BIRD SONGS AND CALLS OF BRITAIN AND NORTHERN EUROPE
With space made available by the publisher for just 200 species it must have been hard to decide which birds to omit, particularly when you have to cover northern Europe in addition to Britain. Those selected for this guide are generally those with distinctive songs and calls, but the restriction of numbers has resulted in some surprising omissions. I am sure we can all cope with the lack of Canada Goose recordings - but where is Barnacle Goose, and more importantly White-fronted Goose? Although its breeding is restricted to Iceland, Great Northern Diver is included, and yet Red-throated and Black-throated Divers are excluded. The decision to leave out Fulmar is odd when birds like Kittiwake are included. And where is Goshawk? Coverage of passerines is, however, much more comprehensive and includes Parrot and Scottish Crossbill.

The recordings have been acoustically cleaned up to maximise their effectiveness in aiding identification. A total of 100 species is included on each disc. Mostly they are in stereo, although not to the extent that you would particularly notice. Dave Farrow contributed just over a third of the tracks, while Jan-Erik Bruun and Hannu Jannes provided most of the remainder. An index to the recordings is given in the order they are played. As a sound enthusiast I'd have liked some information on where and when they were made, although I doubt whether many users would look for that level of detail.

The book contains information on the species featured, with a page on each one with a colour illustration by either Brin Edwards or Mike Langman. Information is given on identification and habitat together with a description of the song and/or call. An introductory section gives tips on fieldcraft together with an overview of bird sounds and how they are used by birds. Explanations of acoustical terms are given too.

For anyone looking for a basic introductory set of recordings this provides much of what they will need at an attractive price. It includes a number of northern species that have never appeared in Britain while ignoring several that breed here regularly. This guide is small enough to carry around in the field. By comparison the new Mitchell Beazley guide is far too hefty for that - but for an extra £5 it gives you recordings of a further fifty species and is more useful if visiting southern Europe. Neither book is comprehensive in its coverage.