If you are a serious birder, “Bird Families of the World” may be the perfect gift for your library. It distills 17 volumes of the encyclopedic Handbook of Birds of the World into a single book. Read an article by author and Cornell professor David Winkler about how you can enrich your birding experiences by delving into the information and photographs about each family.
This book has been designed to serve both as a text for ornithology courses and as a resource for serious bird enthusiasts of all levels. Technical terminology is much reduced, and all scientific terms used are defined in a glossary.
Most of the book is a family-by-family account of the birds of the world. For each family there is a distribution map with the breeding, non-breeding and year-round ranges of each family, a short text “teaser” to invite the reader to learn more, standardized descriptions of the appearance, relationships and similar species to each family’s members, their life history and conservation status.
Each account includes a review of recent ideas about the relationships of the family to other families and relationships within it. It will be a beautiful and serviceable guide.
Purchase the book from Wild Bird Unlimited at Sapsucker Woods. $99.95 plus free shipping. Cornell Lab members receive a 10% discount. At checkout, enter the code: labmember.
