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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Worthy of four stars, but I give it five...,
By
This review is from: Crows and Jays. (Paperback)
...just to raise its overall average from a single unfair, poor review. This book was intended not as entertainment, but as a reference source, and as such it serves its purpose very well.
Part of the excellent bird family series from Princeton University Press, this book covers the Corvids, with a complete entry for each of the 122 species of crows, ravens, jays, choughs and magpies that were recognized in 1999 when this edition was released. Unlike most of the other Princeton books, there is little in the way of general corvid biology included, but the individual entries contain complete details of each species, and the book must be considered a thorough source. Hilary Burn's illustrations are excellent, and show the important plumages and variations of each species.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
All and Everything about corvids,
By Ashtar Command "Seeker" (Stockholm, Sweden) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Crows and Jays. (Paperback)
"Crows and Jays" by Steve Madge and Hilary Burn is a serious and succinct scientific reference work covering the entire crow family. All 122 species of crows, magpies and jays are included. There are 30 colour plates, showing all species and many subspecies. The colour plates also include range maps. The plate section is followed by text pages with species presentations. For obvious reasons, the presentations are rather short, but they nevertheless give a good overview of the habits, habitat and geographic variation of the various species. Provided, of course, that such information is at all available. Many tropical corvids are still little known, the most extreme being the Banggai Crow from the tiny island of Banggai in Indonesia, which is known only from two stuffed specimens in New York! Incidentally, I have an earlier, British edition of this book, published in 1999. I haven't seen this new American edition, but judging by the other customer reviews, it's essentially the same book. And no, it's not intended for light bedtime reading, unless you have a strange obsession with corvids. If you do, they are all in there, LOL.
Another scientific reference work about corvids is Derek Goodwin's "Crows of the World". Goodwin's book has very few illustrations, but it contains more information about the habits of the European corvids. Thus, Goodwin's book nicely complements "Crows and Jays". Both books are worth buying, if you have a serious, scientific interest in these birds. Hopefully, both books will be superseded next year, when Lynx Editions will finally publish a volume of their "Handbook of the Birds of the World" scheduled to include the crow family. I'm sure both Madge, Burn and Goodwin are already involved in that project... ;-)
5 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Exhaustive list, little else,
By T.K. Perry (Mt. Hood, OR USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Crows and Jays. (Paperback)
Though this book does seem to list every conceivable type of crow and jay and give you some basic information about each, it is so very unreadable. The lovely pictures are at the front, separated from the information on each species. The information section is barely written in sentences, and is more of a badly-printed list of fragmentary facts than anything else. Save your money; this book is not worth it.
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