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Handbook of the birds of the world full#
For example, the New World vultures are now thought to belong in the Ciconiiformes -their physical resemblances to the Old World vultures are a nice example of convergent evolution- but in the Handbook they appear where 99% of readers would expect to find them, in the Falconiformes, though the accompanying text gives full details of the grounds for rejecting this traditional placing. Where appropriate, questions of this sort are fully discussed in the text. The taxonomic assumptions on which this 'traditional' sequence was based are now believed to be incorrect in some cases, but it is not the job of a standard work of reference to make its basic arrangement conform to new, and perhaps still provisional, theories. (In the Foreword, Walter J.Bock draws a useful distinction, too often ignored, between these two concepts.) The Handbook follows the Wetmore-Peters sequence, in general use since about 1930, but incorporating many revisions introduced up to 1975 this is the system most of us are familiar with (as used in, e.g., the International Zoo Tearbook). The order in which families and species are presented immediately raises the question of classification -or, more correctly, that of 'standard sequence'. The birds covered in Volume 2 are the Falconiformes and Galliformes (both popular groups in aviculture). The more I look at the Handbook, the more I am impressed by the quality of the planning that must have gone into this project: every detail has obviously been carefully thought through in advance, and if those responsible made any wrong decisions, I have yet to find one. Weight for weight, these books are cheaper than most! Moreover, the typefaces used are fairly small -though perfectly clear- so, as well as the superb illustrations, those 638 pages hold more text than you might expect.
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If the remaining ten volumes keep up the standard of the first two -and all the omens suggest that they will- the Handbook will end up as not merely the best bird book yet published, but the best that is ever likely to be published.įor those who have not yet seen either of them, and who find the price alarming, it is worth pointing out that these volumes are not merely crammed with information and beautiful to look at, but also very big -about 250 mm by 320 mm, and weighting over 3 1/2 kg- so you get a lot of book for your money. Anyone who has seen Volume 1 will know that this is praise enough. Review:Īll that a reviewer really needs to say about Volume 2 of the Handbook of the Birds of the World is that it is as good as Volume 1. Josep del Hoyo: Vice-president, Sociedad Española de Ornitología, SEO-BirdLife, Spain. Eduardo de Juana: Departamento de Biología Animal, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. Kemp: Head Curator, Department of Birds, Transvaal Museum, Northern Flagship Institution, Pretoria, South Africa. Kiff: Director, Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology, California, USA. Isabel Martínez: Grup Català d'Anellament, Museu de Zoologia, Barcelona, Spain. McGowan: Biology Department, the Open University, Milton Keynes, England. Meyburg: Chairman, World Working Group on Birds of Prey and Owls (WWGBP), Berlin, Germany. Olsen: Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Jaume Orta: Consultant, Servei de Protecció i Gestió de Fauna. Poole: Managing Editor, The Birds of North America, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Porter: College of Environmental Science and Forestry, State University of New York, USA. Thiollay: Laboratoire d'Ecologie, Ecole Normale Supérieure, CNRS, Paris, France. White: College of Biology and Agriculture, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA. Andrew Elliott: Grup Català d'Anellament, Museu de Zoologia, Barcelona, Spain. Debus: Department of Zoology, University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales, Australia. Clark: Freelance raptor researcher, Virgina, USA. Carroll: Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, California University of Pennsylvania, USA. Bock: Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia University, New York, USA.
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David Houston: Applied Ornithology Unit, Glasgow Univesity, Scotland.