Handbook of Western Palearctic Birds: a quick review
In spite of having owned this book for just over a week, it is only in the last day or two that I have engaged in depth with it. First impressions, naturally, are that this is a very impressive and in-depth work, it looks great and the majority of images used range from very good to excellent, as one might expect in this day and age of quality digital cameras. The majority of taxa mentioned in the text are represented by at least one image, though some (including such a familiar bird to me as hibernicus Coal Tit) are merely described. That said, concentrating merely on the 'superficial' (not that I'd describe anything about this book as superficial), it would be possible to be 'blinded with science'. Despite all the nice images, however, a book such as this stands or falls on the quality of the information contained within. As is to be expected given the authors, ageing and sexing are dealt with thoroughly and authoritatively, complementing Svensson's