Galego | English

Non fiction

Guía das aves de Galicia

By Xosé Manuel Penas Patiño, Carlos Pedreira López, Calros Silvar (iulstrador)

About this book

This handbook brings Galician Naturalist literature to new level. Scientific rigour and the dissemination value of this work brings us closer to those people, both amateur and professional, who study birds. The guide is structured in the following way: The first part introduces how it is organised, and then there are some recommendations regarding bird watching, their migrations, symbols in the texts and maps of distribution and one illustration with the topography of birds.

The second half is a description and is organised in double pages of text and images ,one opposite the other, so that we can see the bird whose description we are reading, with a total of 448 species with over 2000 illustrations in full colour by Carlos Silvar. Finally, there is an index of species and families. The book includes a CD-ROM with all the non-established species introduced, the birds of 110 species, a broad section of notes and quotations with an extensive bibliography, and the topics of the latest ornithological conferences in Galicia.

The book is included in the collection “Baía Verde”.

Book fragment

Goldfinch - Carduelis carduelis (Linnaeus) - Xílgaro común - Jilguero

Description. 12-13,5 cm. Both sexes look the same. It has a brown back; a slightly forked black tail with white tips; a white underbelly; black wings with white tips at the remex and a large yellow stripe in the centre; white and black head with a red face; fine and conical beak. Breeding birds have stripes, and they do not have the colouring of the head that adults show. Its flight is characterized by waving. Its song is like this: “teLLIT-teLLIT-teLLIT”.

Its distribution and status is palearctic -- the whole of Europe except for the North of the Scandinavian Peninsula. It is sedentary, with migration of Northern populations towards southern hatching areas. In the Iberian Peninsula, hatching is common for the endogenous specimens and also for others coming from Europe during the winter. (...) In September flocks gather to eat the seeds of thistles.

It builds its nest on trees and bushes and lays eggs during the first week of May until the end of July. It lays 3-4 light blue eggs and the females hatch for 13 days; the chicks fly after 13 days. They hatch twice in the year. They feed on thistle seeds, and those of birch, alder and insects.