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 the rare birds in this country and was a huge contribution to the present vibrant birding scene.There have been many, many field guides since Peterson, and now, nearly 50 years after that landmark book comes Beaman and Madge, another leap forward for bird identification.
But it is not a field guide. If you tried to put this in your jacket pocket it would give you a pronounced lean! It is a heavy work of nearly 900 pages covering, for the first time, all the species known to have occurred in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, nearly 900 species. The book exists in the middle ground between the great multivolume works such as Witherby (1938‐41) and Cramp (1997), and the true field guides such as Peterson, familiar companions in the pocket or knapsack. There have been such books before but they were merely boiling downs of larger works, and they did not concentrate on identification. Beaman and Madge is a summation of what is known now about the identification of birds in the area covered. It has been a long time in the making, nearly 20 years, so what is the result of this lengthy gestation?
As the authors say, the book is more comprehensive than traditional European field guides. Many more plumages are illustrated and a much wider range of species is covered with a more detailed text. It pays attention to the finer points of bird identification and so will cater for today’s increasingly sophisticated birders.
The book starts with introductory material explaining geographical area, English names, taxonomy, identification, sexing, ageing, voice, variation, hybrids, status and habitat, and some useful tips on field identification. The latter sometimes seems more of an art than a science, especially when one is out in the field with experienced birders. But a careful study of these preliminary notes will reap rich rewards when one comes to use the book. The appendix covers recent additions plus a useful list of species omitted. There is a short list of further reading followed by indexes of English and scientific names. The bulk of the book consists of the species accounts with accompanying plates. The latter are scattered in groups throughout the text so that, for instance, all the ducks are together with a few outlying illustrations embedded in the text. Six artists have provided these and they are of a high standard. All are in colour. It must be very difficult to get about ten individual birds plus smaller drawings onto one page and yet still make them useful. My favourites are those of the late Laurel Tucker. What a terrible loss to bird illustration her early death was. Her birds are so full of life. An impressive range of plumages are covered, not just the perfect male in full summer plumage but immatures and races as well. For the Lanner falcon on page 251 there are 12 pictures to illustrate the various races of this bird. A page reference on the plate leads to the appropriate text. Alternative names are given and indexed, especially important nowadays with the recent changes in English names. Most of the text is about identification and this is very detailed. There is also material about voice, geographical variation, status and habitat. A small but adequately detailed map illustrates the range of the species. Oddly there is no list of references to further reading on particular species. An especially useful feature of the book is the summary of the families that precede the main coverage of each group. It gives one a good idea of what one should be looking for in the field.
Some colleagues have been a bit lukewarm about this book. I do not agree. They have made comparisons with the two‐volume Cramp which is unfair as Cramp covers all aspects of its subject, not just identification. It is not as radical a book as I thought it would be but, try as I might, I cannot think how it could be improved. Possibly a tick list would have been nice! It is a valuable reference book that brings together all the advances in bird identification that have been made in the last half century. Not a book for the field, but the first book to be consulted when arriving home with hastily scribbled field notes. No one reading it can fail to improve their identification skills. This is a must buy for reference libraries and, even at £65, is well worth purchase. It will earn its keep over many years.
