Review: Flight Identification of European Passerines and Select Landbirds
An illustrated and photographic guide
This new book from the WILDGuides stable addresses the flight identification of Europe’s passerines, as well as a number of near-passerines – doves and pigeons, cuckoos, swifts, kingfishers, bee-eaters, woodpeckers, Roller, Hoopoe, and Ring-necked Parakeet. This is a topic which has traditionally received much less attention (at least in books) than that of, for example, seabirds or raptors. The reasons for this are obvious – passerines are small, fast and hard to watch in flight. However, the author challenges these notions, arguing that, with practice (and the help of this book), many species are readily identifiable.
A brief introductory section covers the rationale for the book and how to use it, covering aspects such as size, structure and shape, flight, flocking and calls. The flight section is particularly worthy of attention, introducing the ‘F-wave’ or ‘Flight-wave’ concept – the imaginary, undulating line traced by a bird’s body as it moves through the air. Also very useful is the section on flock shapes and the movements of individuals within flocks.
The meat of the book is the systematic list which follows BirdLife International taxonomy but is slightly re-ordered so that visually similar species, for example the swifts and hirundines, are next to each other. The book covers 205 passerine species along with 32 near-passerines. Included within these totals are a number of vagrants, including Pechora and Blyth’s Pipits and a full set of Siberian thrushes. Note that the subspecies included reflect the eastern European perspective of the author, with, for example, most Long-tailed Tit images being of ‘Northern’ birds and the summer plumage Rock Pipit illustration being of the continental subspecies littoralis.
Some species are treated together where flight identification is stated to be impossible. This is eminently sensible with species pairs such as Eastern and Western Bonelli’s Warbler and Subalpine and Moltoni’s Warblers. However, some of the other choices seem a little more arbitrary. For example, Iberian Chiffchaff is dealt with separately from Common Chiffchaff whilst Reed, Marsh and Blyth’s Warblers are ‘lumped’ as inseparable – a shame given that migrants can often be at least tentatively identified in flight pending confirmatory ‘on the deck’ views.
Within each species the standard text format covers size, structure and shape, coloration, flight, flock and call transliterations. These texts are short but highly focused and convey a lot of information in a small space. The calls section is often accompanied by a sonogram. Each species account also notes whether it is a diurnal or nocturnal migrant, lists other similar species and includes a small ‘thumbnail’ photograph of the species at rest.
Next come illustrations showing upperside, underside and side-on flight views. These 850 images are produced ‘using the latest digital technology’ and, despite my initial misgivings, are actually really good, and very beautiful too. In particular, the side-on illustrations are very impressive indeed and do look like their subject. The colour reproduction is generally good although the upperside images of the Common and Thrush Nightingales are way too dark. There is also some confusion surrounding Arctic Redpoll (here Redpoll) subspecies - the illustration (and photographs) are labelled ‘ssp. hornemanni’ but actually show exilipes.
Although the illustrations are very pleasing from a plumage detail perspective, they are very ‘flat’ and diagrammatic and are less good at conveying ‘jizz’, or how a species actually looks in the field. At the end of the day, most flying passerine identifications (at least of common, familiar birds) are made by this method, synthesising a combination of clues including size, shape, movement, basic tonal pattern and, often, call.
This ‘field feel’ of each species is intended to be addressed by the photographs (2,400 in all) which accompany each account, either as single images or as montages. The latter type of layout, now familiar since its first appearance in the Crossley guides, is well executed and the overall look is very pleasing. The photographs must have been very hard to source and the fact that over a third of them were taken by one person - Michal Skakuj - represents a major achievement indeed.
The images are, however, highly variable in their quality - flying passerines are not, after all, the most obliging subjects. Some are really good (although some are of birds caught in the act of wing-stretching or taking off rather than actually in flight). Others are very poor and essentially useless for identification purposes. Most of those of Reed Warbler and Common Nightingale, for example, fail to convey any impression of a typical flight view, and the same can be said for many other species.
Published: Princeton University Press
Softback
ISBN: 9780691177571
RRP: £38.00
SPECIAL OFFER: £26.99
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Offer ends: 12 Feb 2021
Most of the photographs certainly communicate at least something of how the birds appear in life but at the end of the day they suffer from the more fundamental, and largely unavoidable, issue faced by all photo guides. Photographs freeze a bird at a particular moment and often fail to convey a more ‘average’ representation of their appearance. Inevitably, this is even more the case with flight photographs (where the average quality and choice of images is less good) than it is with perched birds (where a better selection of higher quality images is available). By contrast, a well-executed painting or two can potentially distil a bird’s essence much more succinctly - see, for example, the lovely ‘thumbnail’ in-flight paintings in the Collins Guide which, in a fraction of the space, convey far more.
Given the constraints of the genre though, this is an impressive piece of work, providing insights into an aspect of bird identification which has been relatively little explored in print. The experienced ‘vis-migger’ or migrant hunter may not find much new here but for the relative newcomer or the collector of photo guides this book could prove a useful reference.
Andy Stoddart
12 January 2021
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