Customer Reviews

Birds of Buenos Aires / Aves de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires.

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Basics: 2005, 118pp, 1st edition, softcover; 274 (90%) of the area's birds covered, 56 color plates with one small color photo and a drawing for each bird, no range maps; Spanish and English

For those of you familiar with the authors' other works, you'll quickly recognize these plates. They are taken directly from the previous, and still in print, "Birds of Argentina and Uruguay". This book, "Aves de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires", is simply a scaled down rendition of the larger book, but with an improvement that I'll describe below. The same paintings and text of the original book are kept in this reduced version. If you own Argentina & Uruguay, you already own "Aves de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires". Consequently, my book reviews of each are very similar.

This book also seems to be an expanded version of a 1996 book by the same author titled "Aves de Costanera Sur y Ciudad de Buenos Aires". This earlier book focused on the birds of the Costanera Sur Reserve along the central coast of the city.

As I noted above, there is a improvement with this book over its predecessor. Each bird is now shown with a small color photograph in addition to the illustrations. While these photos are small - the birds can be hidden beneath my thumbnail - they are still identifiable and I find them useful, especially for those illustrations that just don't show the bird properly.

This book illustrates 274 species, which is about 90% of all the birds that can be found in the city area. On each page are four species. The majority of the birds are illustrated with multiple views (e.g., perched vs. flying; dorsal vs. ventral) and are accompanied by a very short (20-60 words) physical description of the bird. Only the minimum of text is given to range or habitat - typically only a dozen words. As another change from the prior book, a very short (5-12 words) English description is given, (e.g., "long tail, fluttering in flight, central rectrices black, outer rufous").

The artistic quality of the illustrations is decent but not great. The physical structure of the passerines is captured with better realism than other groups such as the gulls, terns, shorebirds, ducks, or petrels. These latter groups have disproportioned wings, bills, chests, or length-to-width ratios. Additionally, similar species (e.g., elaenias, flycatchers, furnarids, etc.) will expose the limitations of the minimal descriptions and small paintings.

No range maps are included.

The English and scientific names are supplied with the bird and are also in the index.

For your trip to Buenos Aires, this book will be very handy if you're restricted to the city. However, if you plan on traveling further, you'll want to get the author's other book that covers the entire countries of Argentina and Uruguay. - (written by Jack at Avian Review / Avian Books, December 2009)

I've listed several related books below...
Birds of Argentina & Uruguay: A Field Guide by Narosky/Yzurieta
Aves Argentinas by Narosky
Aves de Costanera Sur y Ciudad de Buenos Aires by Narosky
Cien aves argentinas by Narosky
Las Aves Argentinas by Olrog
Aves del Uruguay by Azpiroz
Guia Para la Identificacion de las Aves de Paraguay by Narosky