Customer Reviews

A Birder's West Indies: An Island-By-Island Tour (Corrie Herring Hooks Series)

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Readers that have read Roland Wauer's "A Birders Mexico" will enjoy this guide to all the islands of the Caribbean. This book is primarily aimed for birders and nature or eco-tourists. It is a joy to read and after getting it out again this morning to review it during breakfast I was almost late for work as it was hard to put down. It was also very difficult to make the transition from his discription of the Island of Monteserrat to my driving in the snowy cold morning to work.

This 238 page book is packed from cover to cover with information on the birds, forests, plants, and history of the Caribbean Islands with photographs and excellent pen and ink drawing of endemic island birds by Mimi Wolf. There is a checklist of 161 Island bird species in the first section of the book and an excellent list of references in the back. There is a chapter devoted to each island. Wauer walks you around the best natural areas of the islands recounting his personal visits there and the sights he encountered with his keen observation skills and rich knowledge of natural history. If you are a birder, or ecotourist this book will give you very convincing reasons to plan a trip and if you have already bought the tickets it will rachet up your excitement over it.

The only shortcoming of this book is the lack of maps or specific instructions to the parks and reserves mentioned in the book. A good compliment to this book would be Wheatly and Brewer's "Where to Watch Birds in Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean" which has all the specific lists, maps and directions you would need. If you don't get this book (A Birder's West Indies) you will though miss out on a more literary and rich reading experience of the islands.