A Field Guide to the Raptors of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa by William S. Clark (Author), N.John Schmitt (Illustrator)
There are several field guides to the raptors of Europa. The two best are the The Raptors of Europe and the Middle East A Handbook of Field Identification by Dick Forsman and the book by William S. Clark which review here.The book by Bill Clark covers all the raptors of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East including rare vagrants like the Bateleur.
After an introduction into raptor indentification, the first part of the book shows color plates of all the species with drawings by N. John Schmitt. The drawings are good and very detailed. There are much more drawings in this book for most species than in a field guide that covers all bird species of that region. For example, the Greater Spotted Eagle alone has more than 20 drawings. Next to the color plates are short texts for each drawing of a bird that describes the details of the plumage. This is very accurate and for many species all you will need to identify a raptor and even tell it's age.
The second part of the book has detailed description of all the plumages of the raptors, moult cycles and short notes an behavior and distribution. Very helpful are also descriptions of unusual plumages and notes on similar species. The third part of the book contains color photographs and again a description of the charactaristics of the shown plumage. There are not as many photographs in this book as in the guide by Forsman and some pictures are of low quality. Forsman on the other side has only a few drawings and does not cover vagrants like the Bateleur or the Pallas's Fish Eagle.
I really like this book and highly recommend it to everyone interested in European raptors. On whether this book or Forsman's book is better I simply suggest that you get both. I use both and would never want to give up one of them.
Book details:A Field Guide to the Raptors of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa William S. Clark (Author), N.John Schmitt (Illustrator) Oxford University Press 496 pages ISBN-10: 0198546610 ISBN-13: 978-0198546610 |