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Birds of Europe: With North Africa and the Middle East (Helm Field Guides)
 
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Birds of Europe: With North Africa and the Middle East (Helm Field Guides) (Hardcover)

by Lars Jonsson (Author, Illustrator)
4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
RRP: £29.99
Price: £19.49 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Frequently Bought Together

Birds of Europe: With North Africa and the Middle East (Helm Field Guides) + Collins Bird Guide + Collins Tree Guide
Price For All Three: £45.57

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  • This item: Birds of Europe: With North Africa and the Middle East (Helm Field Guides) by Lars Jonsson

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 560 pages
  • Publisher: Christopher Helm Publishers Ltd; New Ed edition (30 Jun 1999)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0713652586
  • ISBN-13: 978-0713652581
  • Product Dimensions: 20.2 x 13.8 x 3.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 408,753 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #38 in  Books > Sports, Hobbies & Games > Fishing, Birdwatching & Other Outdoor Pursuits > Birdwatching > Africa

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Product Description

Product Description
A highly illustrated guide covering all but a few of the Western Paleactic's breeding birds, and includes information on all regularly encountered vagrants.

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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Birds of Europe: With North Africa and the Middle East (Helm Field Guides)
53% buy the item featured on this page:
Birds of Europe: With North Africa and the Middle East (Helm Field Guides) 4.7 out of 5 stars (3)
£19.49
Collins Bird Guide
37% buy
Collins Bird Guide 4.8 out of 5 stars (39)
£13.49
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4% buy
RSPB Birds of Britain and Europe 4.7 out of 5 stars (9)
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Collins Tree Guide
3% buy
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Customer Reviews

3 Reviews
5 star:
 (2)
4 star:
 (1)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A "must have" for bird lovers - just for the plates, 11 April 2006
By Christopher J. Sharpe "Chris Sharpe" (Caracas, Venezuela) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Birds of Europe: With North Africa and the Middle East (Helm Field Guides) (Paperback)
This is a perfectly viable field guide to the birds of Europe and, if it weren't for the existence of the Collins Guide, it could easily be a top recommendation. One thing marks this book apart from other field guides though: the illustrations are so beautiful that they might have been painted for art's sake alone. I have been fascinated by Jonsson's gulls and shorebirds from an earlier series published by habitat and now to have all the birds together is just wonderful. His paintings capture the "jizz" of the bird better than those of any other artist I know. This book will give great aesthetic pleasure long before (and after) one gets it into the field.
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6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars The best and worst of Lars Jonsson , 24 Aug 2008
This review is from: Birds of Europe (Paperback)
This book has a rather complicated pre-history. From 1976 to 1980, the Swedish writer, painter and bird-watcher Lars Jonsson wrote and illustrated a five-volume work on European birds. The reactions were mixed. On the one hand, Jonsson's paintings of birds were rightly admired, and the entire five-book series was translated into English. On the other hand, many Swedish bird-watchers considered the books difficult to use in the field, and expensive to boot. In 1992, Jonsson tried to remedy the problem by publishing a one-volume work based on the previous five volumes. It was called "Birds of Europe". For some reason, it was first published in English. Several editions of it exists. My review is of the 2006 edition, the one with the owl on the cover. (Amazon may have placed this review at some other product pages as well.)

First, the positives. Lars Jonsson is an excellent artist, working in what I suppose could be called the Classical Realist tradition. His illustrations are quite simply great, and almost make the birds come to life. Often, he places the birds in their natural environment, and paints them as they really look like in the field, pre-occupied with wading, perching, eating, or whatever it is birds do. I'm particularly impressed by his ducks, shorebirds, owls, nightjars, thrushes and finches! This makes the book worth the money, for both bird-lovers and art-lovers, and indeed book-lovers.

But is "Birds of Europe" really a good field guide? At the US site of Amazon, several reviewers have expressed a large amount of scepticism on this point. I'm not a bird-watcher myself (my idea of bird-watching is strolling down to some local duck pond to watch the Canadian geese LOL), but I tend to agree. Lars Jonsson is either better at painting birds than at editing books, or perhaps his editor is a lazy bum who coldly calculates that everything with the name "Lars Jonsson" on it will sell, no matter what. For every good illustration, there seems to be an ill-organized, spotty page with dozens of identical-looking flying birds, impossible to tell apart from each other due to confusing captions! Even on the good pages, the captions are often confusing. Sometimes the birds are illustrated on the same page as the species presentation, sometimes on the facing page, and sometimes somewhere else entirely. Some species aren't illustrated at all. And the range maps seem to be all over the place! For some reason, the section on raptors seem particularly screwed up.

There is another problem as well. The book is called "Birds of Europe with North Africa and the Middle East". However, many North African and Mideastern species are illustrated with small pictures only, some are only mentioned in the text, and others aren't mentioned at all! It also looks as if the book doesn't cover the Canary Islands, the Azores and Madeira. And our good old friend, the ring necked parakeet, is only partially illustrated (sic). This stingy treatment hardly justifies the sub-title "with North Africa and the Middle East".

Because of the lay-out problems and bad editing, I cannot give this book five stars. However, as a collection of vintage bird art, it's worth buying anyway. It's a book for your bookshelf, rather than your backpack.
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5.0 out of 5 stars he best, 22 Jun 2009
By Mrs. J. Harvey (uk) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Birds of Europe: With North Africa and the Middle East (Helm Field Guides) (Paperback)
If you want to know what you are loking at and you are anywhere in europe this is the daddy! ! easy to identify , well laid out, go for it.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars a classic but not very well printed
Considered one of the best fieldguides, I agree. I love Lars Jonsson's work. Poor print quality.
Published 4 months ago by Ivens Koen Herman Cecilia

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