BWPi 2.0.3: Birds of the Western Palearctic Interactive - DVD ROM

About this product

Please note: this software was written and designed before 64-bit operating systems (OS) were introduced. If you are running a 64-bit OS, such as a 64-bit version of Windows Vista or Windows 7, this software may not function. Please note that suppliers do not accept returns of sealed software that has been opened, and NHBS can therefore not refund such items. If in doubt, please contact customer services or the software supplier to enquire after compatibility before purchasing this item.

BirdGuides and OUP have combined their resources to produce the entire text of BWP (all 9 volumes) onto this interactive DVD ROM BWPi).

With the new BWPi all information is accessible via clickable menus--just click on the species name and you can access all the material together (BWP, Concise BWP, BWP Updates, videos, sounds, maps, and illustrations). All the text is clearly laid out into paragraphs so it's much easier and much more accessible. It contains over 5600 illustrations of over 900 species, showing birds at rest and in flight and in various plumages, accurately painted by some of the world's best artists including Ian Lewington, Chris Rose and Alan Harris. Every illustration has been individually isolated and captioned to demonstate more clearly than ever before which species and which plumage is being shown. There are also specially-created annotations to point out how to identify a bird and how to determine its age, sex or race. Any two species can be displayed side-by-side and you can manipulate the images so that comparable plumages are next to each other too.

The video clips presented are a significant upgrade on those previously available in BirdGuides DVD-ROM Guide to All the Birds of Europe. The BWPI not only has more videos of more species, but the quality of reproduction has in many cases been improved by taking advantage of the latest technology. Videos represent the next-best-thing to actually seeing the bird in the wild and this will allow you to 'watch' over 650 species. There are over 2000 clips on the DVD with a combined running time of 10 hours. The video clips can be expanded to the required size, and the footage can be viewed frame-by-frame to study details of plumage or behaviour. Multiple videos can also be played simultaneously side-by-side.

The sound recordings gathered on BWPi provide an even more complete collection of bird sounds, covering over 580 species. There are also some extra species in which the video clip includes the sound of the bird singing or calling; this brings the total number of species with sounds to over 600. This is the ultimate work of reference, distilling everything that has been published to date on each species. With over 7000 pages of text, this remains the standard reference for every birdwatcher.

This 2nd edition integrates the contents of the BWPi 2006 update disk: the texts have been updated to cover recently split species and to include the latest population data. Hundreds of new video clips have been added. All six volumes of the journal BWP Update are included. If you own both BWPi (1st edition) and the 2006 update disk, then you already have all the features and content of this new edition.

System Requirements: minimum Windows 98, 2000 or XP; Macintosh OSX 10.2 or 10.3, DVD-ROM Drive.

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