CLIPPED WINGS

The Pictorial Guide is the Bombay Natural History Society’s (BNHS) centenary gift to Indian birdwatchers. For several years the book most widely used for field identification has been Salim Ali’s Book of Indian Birds (now in its ninth edition); more recently, Martin Woodcock’s well-illustrated Hand Guide to the Birds of the Indian Sub¬continent has also become popular. But both of these are highly inadequate, since they cover only about a fourth of the total species found in the subcontinent. The monumental 10-volume Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan, by Ali and Ripley, illustrates some 900 species (while des¬cribing 2060 species and sub¬species). This new book, then, meets a long-standing need by illustrating all the 1200 species found on the Indian subconti¬nent, and this is its chief merit.