![]() I came across another interesting perspective on field guides recently. And it just has a rather sterile feel about it. If you need to know the difference between Moltoni’s warbler and eastern and western subalpine warblers (for example) this is probably the book for you, but for us normal folks it may be overkill. The plumages are incredibly detailed but most of the detail could only be observed in real life at massive magnifications or with the bird in hand. ![]() There are countless illustrations on each page but most individual birds are surrounded by white space. I have the new third edition and it contains well over 400 pages of highly condensed information about Europe’s birds. The book is a far cry from today’s birder’s field guide of choice, the Collins Bird Guide. Accuracy may not have been the book’s strong point but it was published well over fifty years ago, and during that time our knowledge of birds’ plumage has come on in leaps and bounds. The artist took as much care to illustrate the birds’ surroundings as the birds themselves. I have the tiny pocket version which I still sometimes refer to just for the pleasure of looking at the colour plates. My first field guide was the delightful Oxford Book of Birds, first published in 1964, with illustrations by Donald Watson. Yes, I know….prog rock! But I do believe the music that inspired us in our formative years remains with us throughout the rest of our lives. There may be a parallel here with my musical tastes, which have not changed very much since the late sixties/early seventies. It occurred to me recently that this preference may have been related to my first bird field guide. In my exhibition bird/land both elements within each image were given “equal billing” with the other. ![]() One sees so many brilliant photographs of individual birds with any back- or fore-ground reduced to a minimum or blurred out completely that they could have been taken in a zoo. With many years experience photographing the landscape, I just can’t avoid looking at the bird’s surroundings as carefully as the bird itself. I’ve always preferred to photograph birds within their environment.
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