Reddit reviews Collins Bird Guide

Hmm. If you're looking to get into birds there are loads of good websites, but personally I'd recommend picking up the Collins guide (the standard and best) and a pair of reasonable 8 32 or 8 40 bins over any websites. There's no substitute for experience either, so get outside and find some birds. If you don't know what they are, then ask questions. There are no stupid questions. When trying to make an ID, assume everything you've seen is common and check what time of year it's found in the UK - loads of people forget to do that when starting out. And so long as you're enjoying yourself, you're doing it right.

That said, www.birdforum.net/forum.php is useful, if a bit irritating. There are subforums for almost everything and everywhere, and while it's global it's pretty UK-centric. Xeno-Canto has an enormous archive of calls/vocalisations, as does youtube. Twitter has a boat-load of helpful and skilled people on it. Rare Bird Alert (and similar companies) for if you get interested in chasing the rarities. There are loads of local groups/forums/yahoo or google email groups/etc for the UK too - here are two such pages for Manchester, for example. And then there are countless hundreds of blogs and personal sites for specific locations, reserves, people, etc. The RSPB's site isn't hugely useful, imo. It'll show their reserves and so on (as will the sites for the various Wildlife Trusts) but they do have a basic bird guide and an ID tool. It's not nearly as good as a book on the subject but isn't a bad thing to play with and will give you (mostly) realistic and likely suggestions.

If your in Scotland then the Collin's bird guide is your best bet in terms of an ID tool. The Sibley's one mentioned is more for north America, Whereas the Collin's guide covers Europe and Britain, as well as some of the vagrants that show up from time to time.

Guides depend on where you're from. For Europe Collins is without a doubt the best guide there is.

As for binoculars, I would recommend getting a simple 10x42 or 12x42 (the first number is the times it magnifies, the second number is the diameter of the objective lens in mm) to start with. A big objective lens is useful because that way the binoculars will get more light and therefore the image will be clearer in low light situations. Too big, however, and your bins will be too big and heavy. They don't have to be expensive at all. Getting a scope and three binoculars + six guides is bad advice for a beginner and completely unnecessary. It will make the hobby seem more complicated and expensive than it really is. All a beginner really needs is one pair of binoculars, one guide and a lot of patience.

As for the bins you recommended, I would only go for the bigger one and leave the two smaller ones. Especially the 8x21 will be quite useless. 8 times magnification is too little for most practical birding and 21mm objective lens will be too dark in forests and when when it's cloudy or starting to get dark. Furthermore a scope is completely unnecessary for a starting birder. It will just be another thing to haul around which you definitely don't want at all when you're just casually starting to discover the hobby.

https://www.amazon.com/Collins-Bird-Guide-Lars-Svensson/dp/0007268149

Collins Bird Guide is definitely the best, most comprehensive field guide for Europe. If you just want UK however, the RSPB make some good field guides.