Handbook of the Birds of the World – Volume 9

The Foreword is by Richard C. Banks, who traces the history and analyses the application of ornithological nomenclature.
This is the second volume of the Passeriformes, with 9 families which include the last of the suboscines (cotingas, manakins, tyrant-flycatchers), the first of the oscines (larks, swallows and martins, pipits and wagtails), and between them the three from Australasia (New Zealand wrens, scrub-birds, lyrebirds), which are considered in a sense transitional.
More than half of the volume is devoted to species of North America and the Neotropic, including the family of the tyrant-flycatchers, which with 429 species is the most numerous in the encyclopaedia. But the book will be of interest to ornithologists from around the world, as it ranges from localized, threatened species like Australia’s Noisy Scrub-bird and the Liben Lark of Ethiopia, to others more widely distributed, such as the Eurasian Skylark, and other well-known birds such as the cosmopolite Barn Swallow.