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.