The Helm Guide to Bird Identification

An essential field-guide companion covering the sternest challenges in bird identification.

This guide book by tackles difficult identification issues by looking at tricky species pairs or groups of birds, and comparing and contrasting their respective features.

Designed as a field companion for British and European birding, it supplements the standard field guides and provides much additional information. As well as detailed texts, the book includes extensive illustrations by Alan Harris of all relevant ages and plumages of the species concerned.

This is an essential supplement to regular field guides for anyone looking to improve their field identification skills, focusing on the confusion species that can otherwise challenge any birdwatcher.

Alan Harris has been a bird artist since 1980. His work includes a number of ground-breaking guides, notably the Macmillan Field Guide to Bird Identification, which became The Helm Guide to Bird Identification in its second edition. Alan has also illustrated several Helm ID Guides, including Sylvia Warblers, Kingfishers, Bee-eaters and Rollers and Finches and Sparrows, as well as contributing to field guides such as Birds of the Indian Subcontinent, Birds of Japan and Birds of Argentina. He has been Art Consultant to British Birds magazine since 1988.

Alan has been a qualified bird ringer since 1976, and in 2024 celebrated 50 years of continuous study at Rye Meads in the Lee Valley, Hertfordshire. His conservation work in related projects include ringing gulls on the Thames Estuary landfill sites since 1993 with North Thames Gull Group, and as part of an international team to trap and trace the globally endangered Black-faced Spoonbill in Hong Kong.