Customer Reviews

Birds of Europe with North Africa and the Middle East

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

 

 

I have used this guide in Europe, a region with which I am not (in terms of avifauna) particularly familiar, and I find it informative and useful. I have heard varying opinions on the artwork - some rave about it, others say it is too artificial/unnatural/etc. I align myself with the former camp - intracacies and details of field marks are well illustrated and easily discernible - yes, perhaps more so than they would be in the field, but I have trouble with those who fault a guide for showing features not readily visible in the field - any experienced birder should know this is an eternal pitfall to *any* guide.

The text is excellent - well-written (I of course have only used the English translation, I have seen translations in other European languages as well) and concise. I do have two critiques, however: one, I would like each species description to be subdivided by keywords in boldface to make finding important features such as size, habitat, etc. easier to find in a pinch, and two, the criticisms I have read of the layout are mostly well-founded. It is not always clear to which drawing/painting a given species description applies - range maps are not always on the same page as the text or illustration, etc. This is inexcusable and would have been easily remedied if only by use of large, boldfaced numbers a la Simpson and Day (Aus.) or Grimmett et al. (India/Subcontinent).

As for the size, I almost always carry either a buttpack or daypack into the field - so it doesn't bother me a whit. I can't imagine *not* carrying a pack, in fact, so I disregard this criticism entirely - but those who feel otherwise might want to borrow a copy to see how it works for them. For any birder, however, I would say the use for which this guide is most well-suited is as a prep guide - the book to pore over en route to your birding site, soaking in as much of the extremely informative text as possible. It is by no means without fault as an in-the-field guide, but very good nonetheless.

Although I have not yet used this book in the field, I am disappointed at first look. On many, many illustrations, there is ambiguity about the species id. of the many confusing illustrations on the plate. The format tries to follow the plan of text-on-left, plates-on-right, but thumbing through becomes difficult because there are too many exceptions. Even range-maps are sometimes placed on the 'wrong'side of the fold. Many users rave about the art-work---but it is too arty; Some birds of a well-camouflaged comportment are almolst impossible to even find in the illustration, due to the over-emphasis of showing the birds in their habitat. Most passerines are shown in distortedly 'fat' body shapes, defeating the value of identifying a bird by its comparative posture. There are page-numbers only on pages without plates--a terrible nuisance. The paper quality does not absorb my written-in notations quickly, so writing in notes and turning the pages results in smudging or bleed to adjacent pages. I am dreading the thought of entering an area where I have no previous familiarity with birds, and trying to use this guide to identify birds.

On the other hand, for the European birder already familiar with most species, I have no doubt that the depth and thoroughness of Jonsson would make it a valuable reference. But even the paperback of Jonsson is too large and heavy to carry in the field. I consider this book to be unsatisfactory as a primary field guide to a new area, and I will not go to Europe without a more user-friendly field guide.

Lars Jonsson's book has been the number one recommendation for both beginners and experianced birders for many years now, only recently improved upon by the Collins 'Birds of Britain and Europe' by Killian Mullarney et al.

The illustrations in Jonssons book are not perfect but are indeed a good guide to the birds of Europe when 'in the field'. Some birds are illustrated looking 'puffed-up' or 'fat', guides cannot show ALL postures, they should be used as guides only. The book is not as portable as other guides but if you can carry it in your bag then try to do so.

Birds of Europe : With North Africa and the Middle East is definately worth having as part of 'group' of reference guides to the birds of Europe.

This is a perfectly viable field guide to the birds of Europe and, if it weren't for the existence of the Collins Guide, it could easily be a top recommendation. One thing marks this book apart from other field guides though: the illustrations are so beautiful that they might have been painted for art's sake alone. I have been fascinated by Jonsson's gulls and shorebirds from an earlier series published by habitat and now to have all the birds together is just wonderful. His paintings capture the feel of the bird better than those of any other artist I know. This book will give great aesthetic pleasure long before (and after) one gets it into the field.

As a born North-Sea-coast birder and knowing the work of Lars Jonsson since 1977,(his famous five smaler volumes "Birds in the wild" I realised that preparing for North Africa could not be a mistake in buying this book,even if there is the extra weight of all the North European birds described in the book and not to bee seen in Marocco. His marvelous illustrations are a pleasure for all everyone and the book a must for all foreign birders visitting Europe. As a Belgian , I own a big library with a lot of field-guides, especially Petersons' , but this book rivals them all.

Patrick

If ever you feel to publicise this letter,bee free to correct my english .Thanks.

...however, the option of four and a half was not offered, and I'm not sure this guide rates a perfect score. I was very impressed with it. It is well-written (and well-translated, I guess); covering the points of identification well, and very nicely illustrated. The fact that range maps for species on one page are occasionally placed on the following page may be a minor irritation to some, but range maps, in my view, are largely placed in guides for their interest value. Birds fly, and will turn up outside of their normal range, thus, range maps are not important for field identification (at least not during migration of migratory species; and probably as a general rule), and the necessity to turn a page is not a major problem with this guide. This is, overall, an excellent guide, and I can't wait for the opportunity to use it on the home ranges of the species it covers, in stead of on the occasional vagrant.

This book has a rather complicated pre-history. From 1976 to 1980, the Swedish writer, painter and bird-watcher Lars Jonsson wrote and illustrated a five-volume work on European birds. The reactions were mixed. On the one hand, Jonsson's paintings of birds were rightly admired, and the entire five-book series was translated into English. On the other hand, many Swedish bird-watchers considered the books difficult to use in the field, and expensive to boot. In 1992, Jonsson tried to remedy the problem by publishing a one-volume work based on the previous five volumes. It was called "Birds of Europe". For some reason, it was first published in English. Several editions of it exists. My review is of the 2006 edition, the one with the owl on the cover. (Amazon may have placed this review at some other product pages as well.)

First, the positives. Lars Jonsson is an excellent artist, working in what I suppose could be called the Classical Realist tradition. His illustrations are quite simply great, and almost make the birds come to life. Often, he places the birds in their natural environment, and paints them as they really look like in the field, pre-occupied with wading, perching, eating, or whatever it is birds do. I'm particularly impressed by his ducks, shorebirds, owls, nightjars, thrushes and finches! This makes the book worth the money, for both bird-lovers and art-lovers, and indeed book-lovers.

But is "Birds of Europe" really a good field guide? Several other reviewers have expressed a large amount of scepticism on this point. I'm not a bird-watcher myself (my idea of bird-watching is strolling down to some local duck pond to watch the Canadian geese LOL), but I tend to agree. Lars Jonsson is either better at painting birds than at editing books, or perhaps his editor is a lazy bum who coldly calculates that everything with the name "Lars Jonsson" on it will sell, no matter what. For every good illustration, there seems to be an ill-organized, spotty page with dozens of identical-looking flying birds, impossible to tell apart from each other due to confusing captions! Even on the good pages, the captions are often confusing. Sometimes the birds are illustrated on the same page as the species presentation, sometimes on the facing page, and sometimes somewhere else entirely. Some species aren't illustrated at all. And the range maps seem to be all over the place! For some reason, the section on raptors seem particularly screwed up.

There is another problem as well. The book is called "Birds of Europe with North Africa and the Middle East". However, many North African and Mideastern species are illustrated with small pictures only, some are only mentioned in the text, and others aren't mentioned at all! It also looks as if the book doesn't cover the Canary Islands, the Azores and Madeira. And our good old friend, the ring necked parakeet, is only partially illustrated (sic). This stingy treatment hardly justifies the sub-title "with North Africa and the Middle East".

Because of the lay-out problems and bad editing, I cannot give this book five stars. However, as a collection of vintage bird art, it's worth buying anyway. It's a book for your bookshelf, rather than your backpack.