This work is an advanced bird identification manual focusing on thedetails of moulting strategy, sex and age characters. It is designedfor the study of birds in hand, but a good part of the characters areequally observable from distance, so it is also very useful forbirdwatching and field identification. With detailed plates, in whosephotographs the diagnostic characters explained in the textareindicated by arrows and numbers, more than 200 species of continentalbirds from Southwestern Europe.