The Birds of the Western Palearctic, Concise Edition

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My first reaction on opening up the brand-new Birds of the Western Palearctic app on my iPad was to appreciate just how much work must have gone into formulating this iconic tome into its latest format. Tapping on a species brings up the account in full. First come the illustrations – largely recognisable from the original books but with numerous additions. These are scrollable, left to right, or you can tap on the thumbnails to bring up the required artwork. Nolton Haven is perfectlysituated to attracta ship-assisted vagrant –Britain's largest energy port, Milford Haven, is just a short distance away. Oil tankers regularly anchor in St Brides Bay just off Nolton Haven while awaiting a berth and the preceding week before the bird's discovery saw no fewer than three arrive from the southern United States.

The Birds of the Western Palearctic is a comprehensive regional avifauna for the Western Palearctic. It consists of 9 volumes, the first published in 1977 and the ninth in 1994. The main editor for the first five volumes was Stanley Cramp. [1] Cramp died in 1987 and the subsequent volumes were edited by Duncan Brooks and Christopher Perrins. BWP's format and breadth influenced the development of regional avifaunas for other parts of the world, notably The Birds of Africa. The list of the Birds of Western Palearctic has been modified by the 12th of January 2019. The list is showing now some taxa on subspecies – level (upgrade to species level possible), too. This is the case e.g. for the the Common Chiffchaff, Phylloscopus collybita, which has separated lines now for the P. c. [collybita group] – or Common Chiffchaff-group- and the darker Phylloscopus collybita tristis, the Siberian (or Taiga) Chiffchaff.In terms of taxonomy, many of the more recent splits are presented within the 'old' species – for example, Hudsonian Whimbrel is still retained within Whimbrel, although a distinctive pale gold box in the introduction clearly references that hudsonicus is now treated as a full species. Similarly, White-winged and Stejneger's Scoters are both to be found in the Velvet Scoter species account, where illustrations of both can be found and, as with Whimbrel, a box in the introduction outlines the split. Searching for'Stejneger's' brings up Velvet Scoter (and indeed European Stonechat, within which both Siberian and Stejneger's Stonechat are included), which will encouragethe user to explore these accounts for details on the rarer congeners. And, briefly, some statistics to digest: 1,014 species are covered, of which 880 include video footage. With almost 5,500 illustrations, 1,600 line drawings, 300 life cycle diagrams, 2,500 tables and 616 distribution maps, there's plenty to go at here!

Extralimital records are rare: one on the outskirts of Nashville, Tennessee, is the most notable, with a handful seen on boats off the New Jersey coast. Populations in the Bahamas, New Providence, Nassau and Paradise Island in the West Indies are thought likely to have become established via tour boat (Raffaele et al, 2020) Where to start? The home screen seems logical. Stylishly presented and adorned with a Streaked Scrub Warbler, the new app, its features and its aims are introduced. The text offers a reminder of the efforts invested – new sounds, new videos, thousands of photos, updated accounts on top of the existing 5 million words of text that have been sifted through and repurposed. Also included is the original introduction from BWP itself. The overall layout will be familiar to anyone who uses the Collins Bird Guide app. Much of the text is reproduced from the original tome and has not (yet!) been updated, so there's no doubt that close exploration will reveal it to be a little dated in parts. This might include population data – such as for the rapidly declining European Turtle Dove, although this is recognised with one of the now-familiar golden update boxes pointing out that "population and distribution data for this species has changed significantly"–or the status of vagrants –the most recent listed record of Hudsonian Godwit is in the mid-'80s, for example. But that shouldn't detract from the fact that a great majority of the contentremains not just relevant but hugely important to modern birders and ornithologists alike. Three electronic versions of BWP have been produced. The first, produced by OUP, suffered from a number of technical problems. [6] The second, known as "BWP i", was produced by BirdGuides Ltd. This included the full text of the nine volumes, the Concise Edition, all updates from BWP Update, new video and audio, and recent taxonomical changes. [7] The third version was released as an iOS app by NatureGuides in 2020 with an integrated video library and updated taxonomy, though distribution and population data were not updated. [8] Publication data [ edit ] BWP [ edit ]

BirdGuides and OUP have combined their resources to produce the entire text of BWP (all 9 volumes) onto this interactive DVD ROM BWPi). There is also a record from Gevninge, Denmark, between late March and 20 April 1970, though this record has not been accepted by the Danish rarities committee due to uncertainties about whether the bird was of wild origin. A male at Lathbury, Gibraltar, on 2 January 2010 was thought likely to have beenship assisted. Up to now 855 species of the official number of 963 species which has already occured in the Western Palearctic could be encountered (=89 %) during several excursions and expeditions. The total image coverage of the official list in the Picture Shop is now at 86%, which means 830 photographed species which are on the WP-list. Additionally there a lots of images of WP-subspecies. Thus the total taxa list is: 921 species