Customer Reviews

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Birds

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4 star:		(1)
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I purchased this work at a used book store a number of years ago. My primary reason for wanting is the simply fact that I collect books about birds, birding and everything related to such matters. This work was published in 1977 and was written (translated) and designed by Dr. Olga Kuthanova and Dr. Karel Drchal. It was edited by Laura Steward . It was published by Octopus Books Limited, London, England.

This volume covers birds from around the world but is very Euro-centric. It is not by any means a field guide my any stretch of the imagination although the hundreds of color and black and white photographs, many I have never seen published before, can certainly be of great help in identifying different species and subspecies. The text can be quite terse and to the point - This is pretty hard-core stuff folks.

While this work comes nowhere near addressing the thousands of species that can be found world wide, it does do a pretty good job of featuring family groups. The section dealing with the anatomy of birds is pretty standard and better can be found in countless other books now available.

You have to remember that even thirty years ago, a relatively short time if you think about it, bird books were not any where near as common as they are today and the sophistication of the photography; the technology, simply did not exist at that time...this must be taken into consideration when reading this book.

I keep this work more as an addition to my collection and seldom turn to it for information...information which is simply more available either through all the wonderful books we have available to us now or on-line. That being said though, this is a good historical work and is a nice addition to the collection of anyone interested in this sort of thing.

I am giving this one four stars simply because it is one of those books that is interesting but as been left behind in the dust of time. Had I reviewed it when it was first published I would have given it five stars. Three stars is too low as far as I am concerned personally, as I find the work interesting and it fills up another space in my collection.

Don Blankenship
The Ozarks