Updated list for HWPB missing images - A request July 2012

Handbook of Western Palearctic Birds

Update list for HWPB’s image-gaps for Flycatchers to Corvids

Dear friends, photographers and collaborators,

We have recently completed advanced selection of the images for the following 7 groups of the passerines volume of HWPB: Flycatchers & White-eyes (project/group 14); Babblers (15); Tits (16); Nuthatches and creepers (17); Penduline tits, sunbirds and orioles (18); Shrikes (19); and Corvids (20). We now have more than 80% of the images for these sections of the handbook. However, there remain a handful of taxa for which we still require good photographs. Can you help?

Both the image selection and the writing of detailed technical captions for each of the c. 3500 images in the passerines volume require a great deal of time and a very careful approach. Despite this we are up to the challenge. We would like once again to thank the many excellent photographers that form a key part of the HWPB team. As a result of their input we are about to achieve the most complete photographic coverage of any bird book ever published. Indeed, we are well on the way to enjoying complete coverage of the whole spectrum of variation, subspecies, and age/sex-related plumages for all the recognised characteristic taxa within the Western Palearctic (the boundaries of which we have decided to extend for this project to include, for example, the Arabian Peninsula and entire Iran).

We would like to invite you to read through our list below, and to check whether your collection (or that of your friends?) has images of the plumages in question.

Our hope is to fill most of these gaps by the end of the summer 2012, but submission is still possible during the up-coming autumn 2012, when we will hopefully start to lay out the book. We will resume soon the selection for the remaining groups of the passerines volume, Starlings and Mynas (21) to the end, the buntings (26), and we will post further ‘missing image’ lists then.

And last, we thought you like to be updated concerning the overall progress of the first volume, the passerines of the HWPB: main text – we have all accounts written, and 3/4 of these already updated and edited by Lars, and ready for submission, and only 1/4 left to go through same advanced text preparations. Also the image selection and captions works – are in progress, with the selection and full captions for first half, Larks (1) to warblers (13) have been fully completed, and now focusing on the completion of the rest.

Your images are very welcome in the HWPB!

For submission of low-res images before the end of November 2012, please contact José Luis Copete, the HWPB’s chief photographic researcher, at: joseluiscopete@gmail.com

We will be happy to receive images on our upload site, and especially for the groups below (Projects 14, Flycatchers to 20, Corvids). For a reminder on how to upload, or for any other enquiry concerning submission via the site please contact Jim Martin at jmartin@acblack.com

At this stage we still require submission of new images in low-res format. For further inquires please contact René Pop, the HWPB’s photographic editor, at: pop.texel@texel.com

From the team of the long-awaited Handbook of Western Palearctic Birds, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Hadoram Shirihai & Lars Svensson

Get the list with image-gaps here (PDF document)