Review of BWPi as published in Birdwatch magazine October 2004 (reproduced in full with permission).

October 2004

BWP at the click of a mouse

The nine-volume work Birds of the Western Palearctic, published by Oxford University Press, was a massively ambitious project, assembled over many years by the cream of Britain's ornithologists and bird illustrators. The first volume appeared in 1977, and the others followed at varying intervals over the next 17 years, with a two-volume concise edition (with fully updated text and an astonishing 230 new plates) appearing in 1998. Now, with the assistance of multimedia supremos BirdGuides, BWP has been taken into the new digital era with a fully interactive DVD edition.

The entire text and all artwork from both BWP and BWP Concise, as well as a wide selection of video clips, sound files and other extras, have been crammed onto a single DVD. The sheer bulk of information is staggering. However, there is little point in assembling so much material if it is not intuitively straightforward to access and explore. This is the real challenge for the makers of BWPi, and they have done an exemplary job of building user-friendliness into the package. Installation is easy, and also reasonably quick. Once you are up and running, navigation is a simple affair. On the left of the screen, a panel displays a nested menu of species. Click on 'Grebes', for example, and the entry expands to show all Western Palearctic species. Other menu entries have more levels of categorisation – for example 'Sandpipers and allies' expands to show 'Arctic sandpipers and allies', 'Snipes and dowitchers', and four other subcategories, each of which expands further to get you to species level.

Here is where one criticism comes in – above species level the categories are somewhat arbitrary, so you may not find your target bird where you expected it. To use the example given above, Wood Sandpiper does not reside in 'Arctic sandpipers and allies' but further down the list in 'Godwits, curlews, other sandpipers'. However, the quick and powerful search facility should ensure that no species, nor any particular detail, will elude you for long, and the package reflects all of the post-BWP taxonomic splits that I checked. [BirdGuides note: The confusion over the sandpipers arises because all the families and sub-families follow the classification in BWP. The term 'Arctic Sandpipers and allies' is the one used by BWP to describe the Calidrinae; Wood Sandpiper isn't in this group because it's in the Tringinae (Godwits, curlews, other sandpipers). It may be a little confusing but it does follow a logic that is necessary in order for users to find the page of text from BWP that describes the Calidrinae. It certainly isn't arbitrary.]

Once you have a species account open, you can see what is available in the way of text, illustrations and other material. The 'thumbnail view' is a good first choice as it shows every component of each account. By double-clicking the item of interest, you can choose to view the full or concise texts, individual illustrations (including line drawings of behavioural details) or a video clip.

There is at least one video clip, and often more than one, for most species. They are of variable quality, from pin-sharp close-ups to more distant, unfocused views. This, I feel, is a good thing, because views in the field are also of inconsistent quality, and watching a slightly blurry sequence of a wader flock feeding or in flight will teach you a lot more about field identification than studying a static, perfectly lit side-on portrait. There are also call and song sound files for well over half of the 953 species covered.

Navigation while exploring the species accounts is by means of simple back-and-forward buttons in the toolbar, and the rest of the commands can be accessed via the 'file', 'browser', 'features' and 'help' menus at the top of the screen.

Some of the extras provided in the package include: a 'compare species' facility, allowing you to display two species simultaneously; handy links in the text which provide full references for citations; excellent local and online help pages; optional annotations indicating key points on each illustration; and the facility for frame-by-frame viewing of the video clips.

Of features I'd like to see which were not present, a means of searching the individual text accounts for specific words or terms would have been welcome, although it is possible to jump to an account's various subheadings. [BirdGuides note: In fact it is easy to search for specific words or terms either within a species text (just 'right-click' with the mouse and select "Find in Text...") or within all the text of the product (just click on the Search button at the top left of the screen).]

So, is it worth buying, even if you own the books already? Those fortunate individuals who have all nine volumes and the concise set may struggle to justify spending a further £199 [current price £99 - eds] to add a collection of sound-files and video-clips (albeit very good ones) to their library. But taken as a whole, the package is excellent value for money, and anyone thinking of buying BWP in any form would be wise to consider it – especially those who have a decent computer but are pressed for space on the bookshelf.

Marianne Taylor

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