Babbling birds and silent fossils

"Handbook of the Birds of the World" (HBW) is a 16-volume mega-encyclopedia and reference work, covering all 9,000 bird species known to science. It took almost 20 years to publish. Interestingly, the publishing house (Lynx Edicions) is based in Spain. The HBW is only available in English, though. Lynx Edicions have also begun to publish a kind of quasi-official sequel to this series, known as "Handbook of the Mammals of the World" (HMW). I suppose their office workers don't have to worry about the Spanish finance crises! Guys, you have guaranteed employment until at least 2020. I'm jealous.

This is volume 12 of the HBW, covering 15 passerine families, the most well known being the Paridae (tits and chickadees). Despite their small size, tits have the reputation for being one of the most intelligent bird groups, after parrots and corvids. Otherwise, this volume contains chapters on birds with funny names like Babblers, Jewel-babblers and Australasian Babblers. Were they really named by bird-lovers, I wonder? The most comic part of the book deals with Pseudopodoces humilis, once assumed to be the smallest corvid in the world, until DNA tests showed that its really the largest parid in the world! Since some people can't tell the difference between a crow and a tit, I wonder what's next? What could a DNA test on the birds in your backyard possibly disclose? Alien genes?

Each volume of the HBW also contains a special chapter about some specific aspect of ornithology. This volume has an extensive section on fossil birds. For those tired of living, babbling birds? Apart from well-known fossil species (Archaeopteryx and so on), we meet the Messelirrisor (a hoopoe from Eocene), Mancalla (an auk from Pliocene), a megapode known simply as the Du, the condor-like Teratornis and the La Brea Condor, which actually was a condor. And countless of others!

Each volume of the HBW is extremely expensive and (I presume) something of a status symbol in the world of bird-watchers and bird-lovers. If I ever get a slush fund on the Cayman Islands, I'll make sure to procure all 16 volumes of this extraordinary work.