This unique and spectacular book is the most complete and comprehensive photographic guide to the avifauna of the Western Palearctic. Written by two of the world's most respected ornithologists, this book contains the most up-to-date information available on bird identification, covering all aspects of plumage, moult, ageing, sexing, voice, habitat, seasonal and altitudinal movement, distibution and behaviour.

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Hadoram Shirihai is perhaps best-known for his works on Middle Eastern and East African birds, and for establishing the ringing station and raptor migration surveys in Eilat, Israel in the early 1980s. Many of Hadoram's ideas on bird identification and plumages came to light at this time. Hadoram is an editorial/identification consultant for many major European bird magazines. Several of his books have been awarded the title of Best Bird Book of the Year by the periodicals British Birds and Birdwatching, including The Macmillan Birder's Guide to European and Middle Eastern Birds (1996), The Birds of Israel (2002) and Sylvia Warblers (2004). His research in the Southern Oceans over the past ten years has taken him to almost every subantarctic island, efforts which resulted in the highly acclaimed Complete Guide to the Birds, Mammels and Natural History of the Antarctic (2002). He is also one of the few people to have seen every species of tubenose at sea, as part of on-going work on a monograph entitled Albatrosses, Petrels and Shearwaters of the World. Hadoram's decision to create a modern and comprehensive photographic handbook on identification and taxonomy with Lars Svensson was triggered by his realisation that, even in the Western Palearctic, many aspects of bird identification, age determination, and taxonomic understanding remain challenging.

Lars Svensson is known and respected for paving the path of modern bird identification. He is the author of the Identification Guide to European Passerines (4th ed. 1992), often referred to as the 'ringer's bible', and was the initiator and co-author of the spectacularly successful Collins Bird Guide (1999), both among the most-used references for birds of the Western Palearctic. Lars has written numerous identification papers in ornithological journals, and has also published audio material such as Soviet Birds (1984) and Bird Song of Sweden (1990). Lars was the editor of the periodical of the Swedish Ornithological Society, from 1971 to 1974, and also founded the Swedish Rarities Committee, chairing it from 1972 to 1986. He remains a member of the Society's Nomenclatorial and Taxonomic Committee, and is a member of the identification panel of the journals Birding World and Dutch Birding. Lars has conducted extensive taxonomic research in museum collections and in the field; he is an 'honorary ringer' of the British Trust for Ornithology, and in 2004 became an honorary member of the Spanish Ornithological Society. 2004 also saw Lars awarded an honorary doctorate by Uppsala University, Sweden.