The Handbook of Bird Identification for Europe and the Western Palearctic

Rooting about in a local secondhand bookshop just before Christmas I came upon a significant book.It was A Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe by Roger Tory Peterson, Guy Mountfort and Philip Hollom (1954). Most things are a matter of timing and the success of “Peterson” depended on the increasing ability of Britons to take holidays abroad and to wish to identify the unfamiliar birds they saw there. In this way Peterson was quite as significant as the books of Elizabeth David. Bringing this increased experience with them led to the development of much greater knowledge of...