The Helm Identification Guides are a series of books that identify groups of
birds. The series include two types of guides, those that are:
Taxonomic, dealing with a particular family of birds on a worldwide scale—most early Helm Guides were this type, as well as many more-recent ones, although some later books deal with identification of such groups on a regional scale only (e.g., The Gulls Guide, which covers only species in Europe, Asia, and North America)
Geographic, including all bird species in an area (e.g., The Birds of the West Indies)
Early volumes were sometimes published under the Croom Helm or Christopher Helm imprints. In addition, a parallel set of guides, very similar in design, was published by Pica Press in the 1990s (marked Pica in the list below); Pica was later absorbed into
A & C Black (now part of
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc), and these guides are now marketed as a single series. A completely revised version of the initial Seabirds has been published by Lynx Edicions.
Several of the books have won the
British BirdsBird Book of the Year award.
A list of titles in the series, in chronological order of publication, is as follows:
Works with a taxonomic scope
Note: 'nW' indicates those that do not have worldwide coverage.
Pheasants, Partridges and Grouse - a guide to the Pheasants, Partridges, Quails, Grouse, Guineafowl, Buttonquails and Sandgrouse of the World by
Steve Madge and
Phil MacGowan (2002)
ISBN0-7136-3966-0