The Birds of the Western Palearctic

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The Birds of the Western Palearctic^[1] (often referred to by its initials BWP) is a nine-volume ornithological handbook covering the birds of the western portion of the Palearctic zoogeographical region.

BWP is a comprehensive regional avifauna for the Western Palearctic. It consists of 9 volumes, the first published in 1977 and the ninth in 1996. BWP's format and breadth influenced the development of regional avifaunas for other parts of the world, notably The Birds of Africa.

A two-volume Concise Edition was produced in 1998. Both the full and concise editions were published by Oxford University Press.

The boundary used for the region included (a) Iceland, but not Greenland, (b) all of Macaronesia, (c) North Africa, (d) the northern parts of the Arabian peninsula, (e) Iraq and Kuwait, but not Iran, and (f) Russia west of the Urals. A number of subsequent papers^{[citation needed]} have questioned the appropriateness of this boundary, particularly its southern and southeastern delimitations. Roselaar (2006), analysing the breeding distributions of 1037 passerine bird species in the Palearctic region, and northern parts of the Afrotropical and Oriental regions, proposed a southern boundary somewhat to the south of that used by BWP, but excluding the southernmost parts of Arabia.^[2]

A journal, "BWP Update" was published for a number of years following the completion of BWP.

Two electronic versions of BWP have been produced. The first, produced by OUP, suffered from a number of technical problems^{[citation needed]} and customers were offered a refund. The second, known as "BWPi" was produced by Birdguides Ltd.

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] Bibliography

• Snow, D. W. & Perrins, C. M. (1998). The Birds of the Western Palearctic Concise Edition. ISBN 0-19-854099-X.