This first standardised English-language nomenclature of all living birds is the result of a decade of hard work from Frank Gill, Minturn Wright and their co-researchers to produce and justify a list of over 10,000 names.
As someone who can’t remember scientific names, likes to spot a bird or two when travelling but is aware that names can change frequently in guidebooks this is an amazing and happy feat, one I see being equally well received by any global birder, government official and let’s not exclude the many employees of all those publishing housing and bookshops.
‘Birds of the World’ is endorsed by the pre-eminent International Ornithological Conference. It lists names in taxonomic order, along side species names, and brief descriptions of the bird’s geographical location and breeding range. And for those of you more technologically minded, an accompanying CD contains the full text in Excel format to enable you to search, sort, edit and export to your hearts content.