Updated list for HWPB missing images - A request August 2012

Handbook of Western Palearctic Birds

Updated list of HWPB’s image-gaps for species groups Starlings and mynas to Buntings

August 2012

Dear friends, photographers and collaborators,

We like to start these introductory words by flagging the following news: we have finally ended the hard work of going through the entire passerine image collection, we have made a first rough selection and sorted these into species, subspecies and in all possible ages, sexes and seasonal variations. This also resulted in a full index system and a list of desirable but still missing images. The official count of the passerine HWPB base collection now stands at an amazing 29,531 images – all now identified and categorized, catalogued and indexed! This makes the HWPB base collection the most complete WP photographic collection – in terms of both plumage and geographical variation!

Secondly, with this process we have also completed the selection of the images for the following six last groups of the passerines volume of HWPB: starlings and mynas, sparrows, waxbills, silverbills, avadavats, finches, New World warblers, New World sparrows and juncos and buntings. We now have roughly 70–80% 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. 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 the 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?) have images of the plumages in question.

Our hope is to fill most of these gaps by the end of the autumn 2012, but submission for these last groups is still possible during the first half of next year.

We believe that among so many active and dedicated photographers around these days, there is a good chance that our image or plumage gaps have already been photographed and exist somewhere in someone’s archives, memories or computers, and it is therefore only a matter of time until the photographer can find the time to relocate and send the images to us. So if you think – as a few examples – that you have taken images of a fresh ad female (autumn) Eurasian Siskin (just after the complete post-breeding moult), or ad male Black-headed Bunting in Aug–Sep just after the post-breeding moult, then please do not hesitate to send us the image for a check. Remember, in such a handbook it is nice to show a selection of the usual and well-known plumages, but what actually will make this handbook different and much more useful is if we could also photographically cover the least known or documented variations! We can also add here that most of our gaps generally concern autumn plumages – so please do not wait, take your camera and photograph as many autumn plumages as possible in this coming autumn 2012!!

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 4/5 of these already updated and edited by Lars, and ready for submission, and only 1/5 left to go through the same advanced text preparations. Also the image selection and drafting of captions are in good progress, with the selection and full captions written for first half, larks to warblers. Hadoram is 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 21, Starlings and Mynas to 26, Buntings). For a reminder on how to upload, or for any other enquiry concerning submission via the site please contact Jim Martin at jim.martin@bloomsbury.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)