Customer Reviews

Birds of Britain and Europe (Collins Field Guide)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I found this book to be informative as a guide to what I would find in Europe, but it received a poor grade in the field due to the poor organization. I had to flip through three sections to find a picture, description, and range-map for each bird. The maps were really too small for a US native to be able to tell which country was which, and the illustrations were consistantly exagerated to the point that you could only identify the so-called important features (which often were the same as important features of other birds) were all you could be certain were accurate to some extent. Even though I don't speak German, I actually found a book in German which was more useful to me than Peterson's. The German book, entitled GU Naturfuhrer "Vogel" (Birds), had accurate photos of every bird I saw on my trip. The maps in Vogel, although lacking lines seperating the countries, were much more identifiable to an American due mainly to size. After identifying the birds by the photos, I compared the scientific names to Peterson's, and was able to identify the birds with their English names (although usually the pictures in Peterson's looked nothing like those in "Vogel"). So as a field guide, Peterson's gets no stars, but for the descriptions and scientific names, it deserves a little credit.

This book has good descriptions and pictures of the birds of Europe, with very nice color plates. There are arrows that point to key plumage differences among species to make identifications easier. Unlike more modern guidebooks, the book has a few disadvantages, including maps that show only presence of birds in geographical areas, and not seasons or migration routes, and the inconvenience of having to go to three different places to find the illustration of the bird, the description, and the map. It would have been so much easier to use if the three were together.

I was very disappointed in the book because the scope was too broad. It included all of the birds of Europe and very few of the birds were native to England, where I was visiting. Also, the book is very difficult to use. You have to go to 3 places to look up one bird. The bird's image in one section, its description another section and its territory map another section. It is my own fault for not investigating its contents more thoroughly. Since I am so happy with my Peterson North American bird books, I just went with Peterson.

It's a classic Peterson Field Guide. Lots of nice pictures, Good descriptions, Good maps. Requires a lot of page flipping to get the information you want. It's an old school format.