A review of Lars Jonsson´s "Birds of Europe: with North Africa and the Middle East"
This
book has a rather complicated pre-history. From 1976 to 1980, the Swedish
writer, painter and bird-watcher Lars Jonsson wrote and illustrated a
five-volume work on European birds. The reactions were mixed. On the one hand,
Jonsson's paintings of birds were rightly admired, and the entire five-book
series was translated into English. On the other hand, many Swedish
bird-watchers considered the books difficult to use in the field, and expensive
to boot. In 1992, Jonsson tried to remedy the problem by publishing a
one-volume work based on the previous five volumes. It was called "Birds
of Europe". For some reason, it was first published in English. Several
editions of it exists. My review is of the 2006 edition, the one with the owl
on the cover. (Amazon may have placed this review at some other product pages
as well.)
First, the positives. Lars Jonsson is an excellent artist, working in what I suppose could be called the Classical Realist tradition. His illustrations are quite simply great, and almost make the birds come to life. Often, he places the birds in their natural environment, and paints them as they really look like in the field, pre-occupied with wading, perching, eating, or whatever it is birds do. I'm particularly impressed by his ducks, shorebirds, owls, nightjars, thrushes and finches! This makes the book worth the money, for both bird-lovers and art-lovers, and indeed book-lovers.
But is "Birds of Europe" really a good field guide? Several other reviewers have expressed a large amount of scepticism on this point. I'm not a bird-watcher myself (my idea of bird-watching is strolling down to some local duck pond to watch the Canadian geese LOL), but I tend to agree. Lars Jonsson is either better at painting birds than at editing books, or perhaps his editor is a lazy bum who coldly calculates that everything with the name "Lars Jonsson" on it will sell, no matter what. For every good illustration, there seems to be an ill-organized, spotty page with dozens of identical-looking flying birds, impossible to tell apart from each other due to confusing captions! Even on the good pages, the captions are often confusing. Sometimes the birds are illustrated on the same page as the species presentation, sometimes on the facing page, and sometimes somewhere else entirely. Some species aren't illustrated at all. And the range maps seem to be all over the place! For some reason, the section on raptors seem particularly screwed up.
There is another problem as well. The book is called "Birds of Europe with North Africa and the Middle East". However, many North African and Mideastern species are illustrated with small pictures only, some are only mentioned in the text, and others aren't mentioned at all! It also looks as if the book doesn't cover the Canary Islands, the Azores and Madeira. And our good old friend, the ring necked parakeet, is only partially illustrated (sic). This stingy treatment hardly justifies the sub-title "with North Africa and the Middle East".
Because of the lay-out problems and bad editing, I cannot give this book five stars. However, as a collection of vintage bird art, it's worth buying anyway. It's a book for your bookshelf, rather than your backpack.
First, the positives. Lars Jonsson is an excellent artist, working in what I suppose could be called the Classical Realist tradition. His illustrations are quite simply great, and almost make the birds come to life. Often, he places the birds in their natural environment, and paints them as they really look like in the field, pre-occupied with wading, perching, eating, or whatever it is birds do. I'm particularly impressed by his ducks, shorebirds, owls, nightjars, thrushes and finches! This makes the book worth the money, for both bird-lovers and art-lovers, and indeed book-lovers.
But is "Birds of Europe" really a good field guide? Several other reviewers have expressed a large amount of scepticism on this point. I'm not a bird-watcher myself (my idea of bird-watching is strolling down to some local duck pond to watch the Canadian geese LOL), but I tend to agree. Lars Jonsson is either better at painting birds than at editing books, or perhaps his editor is a lazy bum who coldly calculates that everything with the name "Lars Jonsson" on it will sell, no matter what. For every good illustration, there seems to be an ill-organized, spotty page with dozens of identical-looking flying birds, impossible to tell apart from each other due to confusing captions! Even on the good pages, the captions are often confusing. Sometimes the birds are illustrated on the same page as the species presentation, sometimes on the facing page, and sometimes somewhere else entirely. Some species aren't illustrated at all. And the range maps seem to be all over the place! For some reason, the section on raptors seem particularly screwed up.
There is another problem as well. The book is called "Birds of Europe with North Africa and the Middle East". However, many North African and Mideastern species are illustrated with small pictures only, some are only mentioned in the text, and others aren't mentioned at all! It also looks as if the book doesn't cover the Canary Islands, the Azores and Madeira. And our good old friend, the ring necked parakeet, is only partially illustrated (sic). This stingy treatment hardly justifies the sub-title "with North Africa and the Middle East".
Because of the lay-out problems and bad editing, I cannot give this book five stars. However, as a collection of vintage bird art, it's worth buying anyway. It's a book for your bookshelf, rather than your backpack.
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