Friday, October 17, 2008

Far Away Bird Guides

There is something fascinating about the way these wren tails fill the pages.

As people who have been reading this blog from the beginning (does such a person exist?) know, I have a small but growing collection of Field Guides (see scanned covers here). I just found the above A Field Guide to the Birds of Australia in a used book store. This Helvetica heavy style of cover design is one of my favorites. One of the things I like about buying these old guides is that sometimes the previous owner has checked off the birds they have spotted. My copy of A Field Guide to the Birds of East Africa, is full of check marks. I like the idea that the book that I now own has been carried to the other side of the earth and thumbed through in the presence of the birds it depicts.

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