Field Guide to the Birds of Macaronesia (Azores, Madeira, Canary Islands, Cape Verde)

A much-needed guide to an area rich in wildlife, popular as a holiday destination and also popular as a destination for birders looking for a range of endemics and American vagrants. Published by Lynx Edicions - of Handbook of the Birds of the World (HBW) fame - with most of the illustrations being taken directly from that series, you feel confident of a high-quality product as you open it for the first time.

Overall, there is no doubt that this is an excellent guide to the area and the perfect size for a travelling birder, but knowing the quality one expects from Lynx publications, there were a couple of disappointing surprises within. The illustrations from HBW are chopped about, to ensure only relevant species are included, but this has led to some questionable issues of scale on some pages. The colour reproduction, at times, suffers from this as well, with illustrations with different colour casts appearing on the same page leading, for instance, to an apparently bright blue Balearic Shearwater. Printing quality and sloppy picture editing (cutting images from their original coloured background to place on to the white pages of this guide) has also led to poor reproduction, especially noticeable on the heron and egret pages.

This is a real shame as it is something that a little more care and time would have solved. Some of the plumages and island-endemic races included had not been painted for HBW, so have been commissioned especially for this guide. These new illustrations do not live up to the excellent HBW ones and, again, this leads to an uncomfortable juxtaposition of very different styles at times, the Blue Tit page being one such example.

Book reviewed by Su Gough