Mis-identified birds

There seems to be no way to report if you have mis-identified birds when posting your results, eg; I thought I had seen tree sparrows on the bgbw but on reading another post here i've found out they were actually reed buntings, which are totally new to my garden.  I had tried using the bird identifier on the rspb main site but this was useless, even tried e-mailing their help section but the e-mail couldn't get through for some reason. 

Unfortunately my main bird reference books at the moment are an ancient (1972) Readers Digest Book of British Birds and a Collins Nature Guide of British Garden Birds.  The RD book hasn't got actual photos, just sketches which don't give a good picture of what the birds actually look like and the Collins book was just for garden birds and didn't include Reed Buntings, even though I understand they increasingly feed from garden bird tables. 

It looks like i'll have to invest in a really good, comprehensive bird identifier book.  Any suggestions?

Puffins and Robins Rule

  • May I recommend either the RSPB Pocket birds book for Britain and europe, or the collins bird guide second edition a costly book but worth it for the number of sketches and information about all of Europe's birds. 

    Life has many good points, though they can be fleeting, and so one must remember to enjoy them at every moment of the day and night!