Collins Bird Guide: The Most Complete Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe

Product Information

Svensson, Lars; Grant, Peter; Mullarney, Killian; Zetterstrom, Dan (1999). Fågelguiden: Europas och Medelhavsområdets Fåglar i Fält. Bonnier. ISBN 978-91-34-51038-8. Such attention to detail extends beyond the remote and exotic to include previously neglected plumages or aspects of several more widespread and familiar species too. Juvenile plumages of many passerines are now shown, additional plumages are included for the likes of Greater Flamingo Phoenicopterus roseus, Snowy Owl Bubo scandiacus, Osprey Pandion haliaetusand others, while several finches are depicted in flight for the first time. Many of these changes might initially escape notice, even to those intimately familiar with their 2nd edition. This is even more true of many textual changes, which are often subtle and include, for instance, the addition (orremoval) of analogies here and there or small adjustments to modifiers. These are sometimes granular changes, but all contribute to the wider purpose of making the Collins Bird Guidemore precise, more complete and, ultimately, more useful.

The cover of the first edition, in all formats, depicts a barn owl. On the second edition, this was replaced by an Arctic tern. Original Swedish version of the third edition features a bluethroat, while the English version shows a barn swallow. Collins Bird Guide, second edition". HarperCollins. Archived from the original on 27 September 2011 . Retrieved 23 November 2009.We’ve tested the app on as many device and Android combinations as possible but we are aware that we have not been able to be totally exhaustive. If you encounter an issue with the Bird Guide app on Android, we recommend restarting your device. However, even if this was successful in fixing this issue, please still report the problem to [email protected]. Remember to include which phone/tablet you are using and which version of Android you are running. The app is quite large and will take some time to load the first time you run it. Given the resounding success of the Collins Bird Guide over the past 15 years and its undisputed position as the region's top field guide, the potential for a quality app version was always great. However, putting theory into practice is no mean feat and the Touch Press team is to be applauded for forging an avant-garde production that is crisply designed and extremely well presented, and also boasts a number of thoughtful, innovative and above all instructive features that the book version could never offer. And, to boot, it weighs nothing – a sure-fire bonus when out on an exhausting day in the field! I barely have any niggles with the app, but one is that the 'search by attributes' bar in the top right of the screen is occasionally unresponsive for me. The positioning of the text in the comparison views can occasionally be too far from or too close to the plates. However, the beauty of apps is that they can be continuously updated, meaning any niggles are often ironed out in future updates.

With its greater pagination and added illustrations, the new version is bigger and better than ever. But what exactly has changed, and has it made sufficient strides during the 12-year wait for an update to be published? Collins Bird Guide updated, but did anyone know?". www.rarebirdalert.co.uk . Retrieved 2 February 2018. The app can be set to five languages – English, French, German, Norwegian and Swedish – and contains bird names in 18 languages, including Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian. Known Issues Mullarney, Killian; Svensson, Lars; Zetterstrom, Dan; Grant, Peter (1999). Collins Bird Guide. Collins. ISBN 0-00-219728-6.

The ultimate reference book for bird enthusiasts – now in its second edition.

I could find next to nothing that I didn’t like about the app; the main issue I discovered was that the species comparisons are evidently optimised for viewing on the larger screen of an iPad. On my iPhone 5s, the presented information appears very small for some species comparisons (Arctic, Common and Whiskered Terns for example), with the text unreadable when they are presented directly together in this way – something that would be curable with the introduction of pinching in a future version. Another minor (and slightly pedantic) point is that there are the odd snippets of out-of-date information in the text, and some of the British status codes are a little wayward – though these are problems stemming from the original text, rather than a fault of the app itself. Most readers probably already own a copy of the best-selling Collins Bird Guide, widely regarded as the finest regional identification guide ever created. Indeed, the vast majority of Western Palearctic birdwatchers under the age of 30 will never have known anything else as their baseline reference and it is the go-to identification guide for virtually everyone else too. For this reason, the arrival of the 3rd edition is something of an event.

The new illustrations are, as you'd expect given the calibre of the authors, superb. From the perspective of the British birder, updates to some of the terns, swifts, Old World flycatchers and finches are among the most relevant. Among my favourites were the updated harriers and redstarts, while the distinguishing of Hornemann's Arctic Redpoll is also welcome. But the advantages of apps go well beyond savings on weight. In fact, the benefits of apps and eBooks are so strong that I'm now reluctant to buy books unless they are available in digital format. Apps can be searched for particular species or search terms and song/calls can be played – both of which are impossible in physical books. The Collins Bird Guide app offers a 'search by attributes' feature that allows searching for birds, using for example colouration or size, and should appeal to less experienced birders. Furthermore, it has a comparison feature, which allows similar species from various parts of the book to be compared side by side, which is very useful and again impossible in the physical version of the book. Browse through the beautiful illustrations by Killian Mullarney and Dan Zetterström, and read the detailed text by Lars Svensson.With expanded text and additional colour illustrations, the second edition of the hugely successful Collins Bird Guide is a must for every birdwatcher. The Collins Bird Guide needs little introduction. With more than 1 million copies sold and the book translated into 23 languages, its success as a field guide to the birds of Europe is in no doubt. Quite simply, there is no better guide for identifying birds in the region. But not only is it available as a book, it has also been made into an app by developers at NatureGuides. often called ‘small thrushes’), tits and a few finches and buntings are some of these. More than 50 plates are either new or have been repainted, completely or partly. Apart from this, a few new vignettes have been added. The section with vagrants has been expanded to accommodate more images and longer texts for several species. The entire text and all maps have of course also been revised. The combination of definitive text, up-to-date distribution maps and superb illustrations, all in a single volume, makes this book the ultimate field guide, essential on every bookshelf and birdwatching trip. a b c Kehoe, Chris (February 2018). "Collins Bid Guide app for Android". British Birds. 111 (2): 114–116.