Princeton University Press

Cui bono?
The Princeton Illustrated Checklists leave me more and more mystified. This newest volume, covering the passerines of virtually the entire Palearctic, is colorful and conveniently pocket-sized. But what good is it for the birder?
In his introductory paragraph, Arlott describes this book as intended as “a reminder of birds already seen and… a nudge towards [...]

 
One could argue that birding in the western hemisphere started on Hispaniola, with the colorful birds captured by Columbus’s men as trophies of their voyage. Today, more than five centuries later, this Caribbean island and the two nations that share it, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, are the subject of renewed interest in the birding [...]

I came long ago to be suspicious of the encyclopedic impulse, the naive notion that knowledge could be captured and condensed in its entirety in a way that would not reduce its value. Encyclopedias of birds, birding, birdlife, whatever they are called, seem particularly susceptible to superficiality, and browsing most of them gives me what [...]

The question was posed some years ago in the letters column of Birding magazine: which is better, birding or sex? Myself, I think the answer is obvious, but others have disagreed. What is 100% certain is that one of these popular hobbies is older than the other: Adam named the creatures of the earth quite some [...]

It’s a great idea, the “illustrated checklist,” and as Princeton University Press keeps turning them out, I’m beginning to wonder whether Ber van Perlo may soon become the only illustrator in history to have painted every bird in the world!
Unlike a full-scale (and full-weight) field guide, the Princeton Illustrated Checklists offer only densely packed color [...]