Author Description

Few birds can match the dazzling beauty of kingfishers, bee-eaters, and rollers. Until now no comprehensive treatment of these families has appeared in a single volume. This authoritative guide provides an up-to-the-minute review of all that is known about the world's 123 species. The forty magnificient plates by Alan Harris show every species, all main subspecies, and most sex and age variations--350 portraits in all. For easy reference, color maps showing breeding and wintering ranges appear opposite the plates. Text and plates are carefully coordinated, with emphasis on behavior, field characters, and identification; and the species accounts, which form the bulk of the book, are liberally illustrated with line drawings. -- "The Auk"