Birdwatchers Yearbook
The Birdwatchers Yearbook 2003 from Buckingham Press in association with Swarovski Optics ISBN 0953384055 - price £15 direct from the publisher post free: Buckingham Press, Freepost ANG30007, 55 Thorpe Park Road, Peterborough PE3 6BR – cheques payable to Buckingham Press. Mention this review before 31st Jan 2003 and pay £13.50p including P&P!
As the publishers puff says Going from strength to strength… in its 23rd year of publication I wondered if it was and then cast my mind back 10 years to when I started buying it and I have to concur.
Like very many people I take the Yearbook for granted and am not surprise by the high quality of accuracy and the extent of the content but in truth I should be. I of all people know how hard it is to keep an informational source up to date when one relies on hundreds of individual correspondents to supply information. I checked their County Recorder entries against mine on Fatbirder`s county pages and found them to be virtually identical. I had missed a few updates, and so have they but they have the excuse of hard copy and cannot, as I do, go on updating information daily.
So I took a fresh look at this superb resource and was impressed by what is in there. I suppose I have looked for what I want, rather than look to see what is there before, so cannot guarantee that what is new to me is new to the Yearbook but I suspect this year`s edition is even more comprehensive than usual. Did they always have a tide table? Was there always a chart for sunrise and sunset? I don1t recall a list of speakers before? What I do know is that there was always a great deal of information about birding organisations throughout the world as I have plundered its pages to ensure relevant info on Fatbirder [I invite them to plunder my pages in the same way].
There are definitely more
birding areas covered this time and I am pretty sure that the British List with space to record your own sightings is new
too.
As it happens, it matters not one whit what is new and what is not – the truth is that this is a sort of Filofax for
birders and second only to a good fieldguide as an essential birding book!
Fatbirder
Created: 4th Dec 2002
