Pigeons and Doves: A Guide to Pigeons and Doves of the World (ISBN 0300078862)

Worth every penny:
This is an excellent book, giving full details on all the pigeon and doves species of the world. Excellent color plates also make the reader very familiar with the different types. I'd recommend this read to the budding aviculturist, old bird breeders, orinthologists, and even the average bird watcher.

Good content, poor editing, modest construction:
"Pigeons and Doves" is the modern book on this family. There are important ups and downs to this book, as with any large monographic work. The artwork is very good, even by bird book standards. Quality is consistent enough between the two illustrators. Eustace Barnes' illustrations range from mediocre in color and form to very good. Those of John Cox range from very good to excellent. The plates as a whole reach slightly above field guide caliber, and do not achieve the degree of detail seen in some monographic works. However, the detailed attention Cox pays to the scalation of the small legs and feet on his subjects is particularly impressive. Color of the plates does not show the richness seen on more impressively printed works. Plate layout is mostly very good, with a marked exception being that of plate 50, in which the Yellow-vented Green Pigeon, Treron seimundi, has the end of its beak cut off by the outer page edge. Still, the 76 plates alone are likely worth the publisher's price. The content of the book is really something else. Considering the number of species needing coverage (both "recently" extinct and extant - over 300), quite a bit of information is given, sometimes with dilution so better-known species don't fill up half the book, and sometimes with holes due to lack of knowledge on certain species. Range maps are blobs on small images, and as already mentioned in another review, the sense in the size of some of the islands depicted makes no sense. This is especially true in the cases where a given species inhabits certain portions of small islands, yet the whole islands are shaded and occupy the space of a dot on an ocean map. The citations included are helpful, but can be misleading. There is at least one mismatch in reference year between the text citation and the bibliography. At least one text-cited reference is simply absent from the bibliography. There are other editorial mistakes; some are unimportant, such as missing periods. Others are critical, such as the blunt cutoff in the "final" sentence of the "Status and Distribution" account for the extinct Bonin Wood Pigeon, Columba versicolor: "Haha-jima (island) further south was not ornithologically explored until after the arrival of alien mammals, but it is likely that C. versicolor (end account)" - what is really hypothesized about the fate of the Bonin Wood Pigeon in lieu of alien mammals, the casual reader may never know thanks to this lousy editorial error. The book's construct is good save for the actual binding, which is weak for the thickness and weight of the contents inside the boards. The binding should have been woven, but instead is rather crudely glued. The size of the book is larger than field guide format, but for the quality of artwork and the amount of information per species, it should have been bigger, even if that would have meant upping the publisher's price. This book will give Oxford a run for its money should the "Bird Families of the World" series ever produce a volume on the Columbidae. I think of "Pigeons and Doves" as the first major book in English on the family as a whole since Goodwin's last edition of his book back in 1983. Despite the errors, this book is well worth its space on the shelf of any quality bird book fan.

great book for the family columbidae:
I am an avid bird man. Love birds from foreign countries, and Pigeons and Doves are a special affection of mine. This book is detailed and complete. A great asset to my collection of bird books. any one needing a great reference book on Pigeons and Doves would surely buy this book.

Simply Amazing:
This is the best field guide on pigeons and doves that you can quite possibly buy. Any illustration that Eustace Barnes does is simply, amazing to be quite frank with you. The information is accurate, the range maps are well done and I wish that more guides would follow this format.

David Gibbs Delivers:
An excellent reference to the Pigeons and Doves of the world. The color drawings and maps are unbelievable. I was able to identify a lot of birds after reading this book that I could not earlier. I give it two thumbs up.