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Handbook of British Birds

The Handbook of British Birds
Author H.F. Witherby
Rev. F.C.R. Jourdain
Norman F. Ticehurst
Bernard W. Tucker
Illustrator Marinus Adrianus Koekkoek the Younger
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Subject Ornithology
Publisher H. F. & G. Witherby
Publication date
1938-1941
Preceded by Practical Handbook of British Birds
Followed by The Birds of the Western Palearctic
The Popular Handbook of British Birds
Author Philip Hollom
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Subject Ornithology
Publisher H. F. & G. Witherby
Publication date
1952
The Popular Handbook of Rarer British Birds
Author Philip Hollom
Illustrator David Reid-Henry et al
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Subject Ornithology
Publisher H. F. & G. Witherby
Publication date
1960

The Handbook of British Birds was a pioneering bird guide by H.F. Witherby, Rev. F.C.R. Jourdain, Norman F. Ticehurst and Bernard W. Tucker, published in five volumes by H. F. & G. Witherby between 1938-1941.

The Handbook, as it was often cited, was itself a much enlarged and revised version of H.F. Witherby's Practical Handbook of British Birds (published between 1919 and 1924 as two volumes in three parts).

Some of the plates were by Marinus Adrianus Koekkoek the Younger and were licensed after they were painted for Ornithologia Neerlandica, de vogels van Nederland by Eduard Daniel van Oort (published 1922-1935).

The Handbook was reprinted a number of times, until at least the eight impression in 1958. The later printings (they were not described as new editions) having a few pages devoted to "additions and corrections" to previous "impressions", but few of these are of great significance. In only a few cases was the main text correspondingly corrected.

Eventually, it was superseded by The Birds of the Western Palearctic.

A single-volume concise edition, The Popular Handbook of British Birds was produced by Philip Hollom in 1952. It used descriptions drawn from the Handbook and updated accounts of their status and distribution. Revised editions appeared in 1955, 1962, 1968 and 1988. These editions were far more heavily revised than those of the original Handbook, not least to take account of changes in bird taxonomy, as described in each edition's new forward.

(SBN 85493 002 7)

The 1968 edition complied with the then-new British Ornithologists' Union checklist, and incorporated further research by J. L. F. Parslow. Its 511 numbered pages described 330 species. The eggs of all breeding species were illustrated, at life size, mostly in colour

(ISBN )


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