Welcome to day six of the “Crossley Britain and Ireland Blog Tour,” otherwise known as the American stop. You can check out the previous stop on the tour at The Biggest Twitch or you can check out the next stop on the tour at Mark Avery.

There is another fantastic book in the line-up of Crossley ID Guides – and you can win a copy here on 10,000 Birds! The latest offering, The Crossley ID Guide: Britain & Ireland, has been released and you probably want a copy. This book, authored by Richard Crossley  (surprise!) and Dominic Couzens, follows the same format as the raptor book and, of course, The Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds, which started the series. We’ll save a full review for another time but it is probably accurate to say that if you liked the previous books you will like this one, especially if you want to get to know the birds of Britain and Ireland better.

Getting to know the birds of Britain and Ireland is something that both Mike and I aspire to. And while neither of us have ever birded in either place we have both seen some birds that occur in ol’ Blighty and the Emerald Isle. In fact, you have too!

There is actually quite the overlapping avifauna between North America and Europe. Though birders on each side of the Atlantic Ocean tend to want to focus only on the vagrants there are quite a few species that are native to both. This contest will actually require you to take both vagrants and residents into account.

The Contest Rules

There are ten portions of plates from the upcoming book in this blog post, each representing one species. (If more than one species appears on a plate the one we are looking for is the predominant one.) To win this contest, you need to figure out how many of the ten species either Mike Bergin (the 10,000 Birds co-owner) or I have seen in the American Birding Association area and put the correct answer in the comments. If you get the answer correct and no one else does then Princeton University Press, who kindly agreed to provide a copy of The Crossley ID Guide: Britain & Ireland,  will mail it to you! If more than one person guesses correctly we will go to the tiebreaker question, which is “How many of the ten species have BOTH Mike and Corey seen in the American Birding Association area?”

So put two numbers in your comment, make sure that we can figure out who you are by the information you use to comment with, and you are well on your way to winning your own copy of The Crossley ID Guide: Britain and Ireland. Please, only one guess per person. All guesses must be in by Friday, 5 November, at the end of the “Crossley Britain and Ireland Blog Tour.”

Easy, right? Good luck!

Crossley 10

Crossley 9

Crossley 8

Crossley 7

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Crossley 5

Crossley 4

Crossley 3

Crossley 1

If you are not entirely confident of your odds of winning this 10,000 Birds contest you can also enter to win one of five (!) signed copies right here!

Finally, on 21 November there will be a live online happy hour chat with the authors. Find out more details and sign up here.

Written by Corey
Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy and Desmond Shearwater. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.