Handbook of the Birds of the World (HBW)

HBW is the most remarkable publishing project on birds ever conceived and executed, It is the first work ever to illustrate all the species of birds in the world, in addition to providing access to all the essential information about each one of them. In fact, it will be the first work ever to deal with each member of an entire Class of the Animal Kingdom. HBW volume 1 was published in 1992, and the 16th and final volume was published at the end of 2011. This is, however, not the end of the HBW project. In the 20 years that have past since this project started some new species have been discovered. A Special Volume covers and illustrates all these species, 57 in total with texts, plates and distribution maps in typical HBW format and is projected to be published at the beginning of 2013.

Complementing the series, Lynx will publish a checklist in association with BirdLife: HBW And Birdlife International Illustrated Checklist Of The Birds Of The World. It will include all the HBW plates and essential information in two volumes. Each volume will have the same size of a HBW Volume. Volume 1 covers the non-passerines, and volume 2 covers the passerines.

Lastly, Lynx has announced continuation of this project online.

NHBS has been involved with the HBW project from the beginning, and we hold all volumes of HBW in stock.

More information on HBW from the Lynx website:

An international project
The first volume was greeted with great enthusiasm by the ornithological world and received excellent reviews in almost all of the world's specialized journals. The prestige gained permitted the incorporation of renowned experts from all over the world as authors. These experts are specialists in the families they write about and have helped HBW to become a truly international project, a feature which has been highlighted in many of the excellent reviews which have also been written on the subsequent volumes. A large number of them designate this series as an indispensable standard reference work.

Production
The production of complex volumes, compiling an enormous amount of information and a large number of original illustrations, requires time. Thus, series with several volumes generally have quite lengthy publication schedules. Nevertheless, we at Lynx believe that, for a series to be of greater use, it is important that the gap between the publication of each volume be kept as short as possible. The only way to achieve this is to work on several volumes simultaneously. Volume 2 of HBW appeared practically two years after the first one. With the publication of the following volumes we reached our target of publishing one volume every 18 months. Since volume 7 we have managed to reduce the interval between volumes even further to the point where we are now producing a new volume every year. Thus, we believe that HBW is the quickest means of obtaining thorough and fully illustrated information on absolutely every one of the families in the Class Aves (no matter how small), at an unbeatable price.

Forthcoming volumes in this series will be added to this page as soon as we become aware of them.

Please contact customer.services@nhbs.co.uk about setting up a standing order, or if you would like to be notified when we add new volumes.