Helm Guide to Bird Identification

Keith Vinicombe is an ornithologist and bird identification expert. Keith has served on both the British Birds Rarities Committee and the BOU Records Committee; he is identification consultant to Birdwatch magazine, and has written extensively on bird identification in Birdwatch and other journals, including Birding World and British Birds.Alan Harris has been a bird artist since 1980. His work includes a number of ground-breaking ornithological books, including Helm Identification Guides such as Sylvia Warblers, Kingfishers, Bee-eaters and Rollers and Finches and Sparrows, as well as contributions to field guides such as Birds of the Indian Subcontinent, Birds of Japan and Birds of Argentina. Alan has been Art Consultant to British Birds magazine since 1988.

For beginner and intermediate-level birders, there's plenty of information to soak up; plenty to learn about. And for those more seasoned among us, it'll act as an extremely useful identification reference on many of the more pressing quandaries relevant to British (and European) birders in contemporary times.

• Whooper and Bewick’s Swans, Grey geese; Snow and Ross’s Geese; Canada and Cackling Geese; Brent Geese; Mandarin and Wood Ducks; Eurasian and American Wigeon; Large dabbling ducks in late summer and autumn: Mallard, Gadwall, Pintail and Shoveler; Small dabbling ducks: Common, Green-winged and Blue-winged Teals, and Garganey; Aythya ducks: Greater and Lesser Scaup, Ring-necked Duck, Ferruginous Duck and hybrids; Eiders: females, immatures and eclipse males; Scoters; Goosander and Red-breasted Merganser; Divers; Great and Cory’s Shearwaters; Manx, Balearic and Sooty Shearwaters; Storm, Leach’s and Wilson’s Petrels; Slavonian, Black-necked and Red-necked Grebes; Bittern and Night Heron; Purple Heron; Egrets; Cormorant and Shag; Red and Black Kites; Hen, Montagu’s, Pallid and Northern Harriers; Sparrowhawk and Goshawk; Common, Rough-legged and Honey Buzzards; Golden and White-tailed Eagles; Falcons: Peregrine, Merlin, Hobby and Red-footed Falcon; Ringed, Little Ringed and Kentish Plovers; Large plovers: Grey, European Golden, American Golden and Pacific Golden Plovers, and Dotterel; Little Stint, Temminck’s Stints and Sanderling; The rare stints: Semipalmated, Western and Least Sandpipers, and Red-necked and Long-toed Stints; Baird’s and White-rumped Sandpipers; Dunlin, Curlew Sandpiper, Broad-billed Sandpiper and Knot; Ruff, Buff-breasted Sandpiper and Pectoral Sandpiper; Common, Jack and Great Snipe; Godwits; Curlew and Whimbrel; Common and Spotted Sandpipers; Green and Wood Sandpipers; Redshank, Spotted Redshank, Greenshank and Marsh Sandpiper; Lesser and Greater Yellowlegs; Phalaropes; Arctic, Pomarine and Long-tailed Skuas; Kittiwake, Little and Sabine’s Gulls; Mediterranean Gull; Ring-billed Gull; Herring, Lesser Black-backed and Great Black-backed Gulls; Yellow-legged and Caspian Gulls; Glaucous and Iceland Gulls; Gull-billed and Sandwich Terns; Marsh terns – Black, White-winged Black, American Black and Whiskered Terns; Common, Arctic and Roseate Terns; Auks; Pigeons and doves; Long-eared and Short-eared Owls; Common, Pallid and Alpine Swifts; Red-backed, Turkestan, Daurian, Brown, Woodchat and Masked Shrikes; Great Grey, Lesser Grey and Steppe Grey Shrikes Crows: Carrion Crow, Rook, Raven, Jackdaw and Chough; Marsh and Willow Tits; Skylark, Woodlark and Short-toed Lark; Red-rumped Swallow; Cetti’s Warbler; Greenish and Arctic Warblers; Yellow-browed, Hume’s and Pallas’s Warblers; Goldcrest and Firecrest; Radde’s and Dusky Warblers; Wood Warbler, Western and Eastern Bonelli’s Warblers; Willow Warbler and the chiffchaffs; Aquatic Warbler; Unstreaked Acrocephalus warblers; Iduna warblers: Booted, Sykes’s and Eastern Olivaceous Warblers; Hippolais warblers: Melodious and Icterine Warblers; Locustella warblers: Grasshopper, Savi’s and River Warblers; Sylvia warblers: Common Whitethroat, Lesser Whitethroat, Subalpine, Garden and Barred Warblers; Rose-coloured Starling; Ring Ouzel and Blackbird; Song Thrush and Mistle Thrush; Common and Thrush Nightingales; Common and Black Redstarts;European Stonechat, Eastern Stonechat and Whinchat; House and Tree Sparrows; Grey, Yellow, Eastern Yellow and Citrine Wagtails; Pied and White Wagtails; Tawny, Richard’s and Blyth’s Pipits; Small pipits: Meadow, Tree, Red-throated, Olive-backed and Pechora Pipits; Rock, Water and Buff-bellied Pipits; Green finches: Greenfinch, Siskin and Serin; Linnet, Twite and Common Rosefinch; Lesser, Mealy and Arctic Redpolls; Common, Parrot, Scottish and Two-barred Crossbills; Cirl Bunting and Yellowhammer; Reed, Little, Rustic and Lapland Buntings