Collins Bird: a Complete Photographic Guide to all British and European Species
I’m not sure where exactly this book fits in the canon of bird literature, or who would find it useful. As it says in the introduction, it’s not a field guide, but rather “a book to look up when you get home, to find out more about what you have seen”. The publicity claims it offers an insight into the “secret lives, bizarre habits and fascinating behaviour of over 420 European species”. Hmmm. The chosen species are all those breeding in the area covered, winter visitors and commoner migrants, but this (as always) is highly subjective – there’s no Surf Scoter here, and no Ring-billed Gull, although on any given day in the British Isles, there’s usually at least one of each of those species around.
Species are organised taxonomically, but in the traditional order, beginning with divers and grebes, designed to reflect the order in which “they are thought to have appeared in the fossil record”. There’s an introduction for each family, which details the general characteristics on food, habitat, eggs, breeding and nesting behaviour, and text of varying length for each species, from 11 lines for White Pelican to 93 lines for – wait for it – Mallard, complete with a full-page shot of the ubiquitous duck, and another photo of a flock on ice.
It’s written, seemingly, for the keen beginner, the text being accessible, written in Couzens’s distinctive style, which does indeed convey some useful information on the lives of the birds considered and their behaviour.
David Cottridge has done a fine job gathering together some fantastic photographs to illustrate the species, giving an “instant impression … of the character of the birds”. The quality of reproduction is generally high, so I’m not sure what happened to the flock of Spanish Sparrows chosen to illustrate the sparrow family. Also, some of the photographs would have benefited from the use of extended captions, pointing out behavioural traits or identification features not contained in the small panel accompanying the species accounts.
The scientific name for each species and family is given a phonetic spelling as well as the correct spelling, which might be useful for some, but I just can’t work out who. Pub quiz enthusiasts perhaps, or those who want to impress their (birding) friends?
The distribution maps are too small to be of much use, and are glaringly wrong in some cases – no Crested Tit in Scotland, no Golden Oriole in Britain.
Birds, it says here, would make “an ideal gift for bird lover and complete beginner alike”. That’s probably true, but for me, the hype promised “secrets” and “bizarre habits” and, while I wasn’t expecting something along the lines of Hollywood Babylon, there wasn’t much of either.
First published in Birdwatch 169: 52 (July 2006). For a wide range of birding books, some at excellent discount prices, please take a look at the Birdwatch Bookshop.
Tech spec
- Collins Birds: A complete photographic guide to all British and European species by Dominic Couzens, photographs compiled by David Cottridge (Collins, London, 2005).
- 333 pages, 500 colour photographs, 1,000 colour illustrations, more than 400 distribution maps.
- ISBN 0007138210. Hbk, £30.