153 of 157 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I feel lighter already..., May 13, 2007
For 95% of the traveler's going to Costa Rica, you'll want to take this book.
For readers interested in natural history, I think it's important to understand what this book is - and what Costa Rica needed. The new Garrigues and Dean field guide, The Birds of Costa Rica: A Field Guide (henceforth the G&D field guide) will not be the new barometer for definitive field guides. Lucky for us, it doesn't need to be. The earlier Skutch and Stiles Field Guide to the Birds of Costa Rica (henceforth the S&S field guide) is a great field guide in its own right, but has no need to be duplicated. On the plus side, the earlier S&S guide has buckets of information about behavior and ecology, and it is highly informative about general natural history as well as birds. The problem has been that for nearly a decade now, the S&S field guide was just too much for nearly every traveler. The limitations become greater with every passing year. It suffers from an extremely heavy weight (especially when wet), has no visual range maps, and has color plates that are small, sometimes dark, and sometimes poorly placed.
Costa Rica simply doesn't need a bird field guide to compete with the S&S guide (who wants to compete with Alexander Skutch!). It needed a guide to solve the aforementioned S&S problem - a lighter weight, better plates, and good range maps. This book, by Richard Garrigues (Author) and Robert Dean (illustrator), solves that problem. It's easy to call the book "excellent" because of the overall mission. It didn't have to be the best ever ... it had to be the most useful for travelers (and, yes, birders) going to Costa Rica. Clearly the authors knew exactly what they were out to accomplish.
The weight and the range maps of the new guide will become obvious right away to those who have walked and used the S&S field guide for so many years (I'm now in double-digit territory on the number of times I've been to Costa Rica). The color plates, however, are a comparison thing. One will have had to have had the S&S guide to appreciate the change - but it's there. So for these three challenges, mission accomplished. Done. Solved.
To get to the proper weight, the G&D field guide had the good sense to remove the ecology, habits, and behavior of all the birds. Adding that information would mostly just duplicate the S&S field guide anyway. The G&D guide concentrates on the physical characteristics needed for identification - just what most of us are looking for. I like the habits and ecology of the birds - but I don't need to lug that information into the field. That's the kind of information I'll look up later. The new G&D guide also eliminates some rather unnecessary pelagic birds and concentrates specifically on what most travelers need... the land birds.
The range maps, thankfully, are large enough to look at without squinting. I would have liked to have seen the maps break down the regional borders, but it's hard to quibble when you've never had a visual range map before. (for the record, I have not looked at the accuracy of the maps. Someone will need to chime in later on that one).
The plates were the biggest challenge. Dean has done an admirable job by making the plates bigger and cleaning up the rather flat, dark, images that occasionally plague the S&S guide. There are fewer images per page, and if anyone has tried to deal with the hummingbird plates on the S&S guide, you'll immediately appreciate the improvement. Finding the right text for the right species for that guide required some visual gymnastics. I also agree with the reviewer who said the images in the new G&D guide seem a little dim sometimes. They do. But after seeing images that were too dark for so many years, I don't feel any room to complain. I'm convinced it's not Dean's plates, but the printing itself. In North America we had a similar problem with the rufous and red colors in the Sibley field guides. Hey... it happens. Still, the detail of the plates is significantly better even if the color isn't as lively or as rich as it should be on some species.
In all, most everyone will likely end up with this as their primary bird field guide. That's really a shocking statement to make and I didn't expect to be making it. That's a real tribute to the author and illustrator. The S&S guide will still be in the suitcase of course, but thankfully I won't need to drag its fat, warped body around with me anymore. Researchers and students may opt for the older S&S guide because of the informative text, but most birders and passive visitors will want the lighter, more useful G&D guide. It's a great addition.
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44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sweet New CR Field Guide, May 2, 2007
This is a great new field guide to the birds of Costa Rica. Although not as comprehensive as the venerable Stiles & Skutch, it packs over 820 species into a pocket-sized guide. The illustrations by Robert Dean are beautifully rendered and seem quite accurately done (experts on CR birds can chime in to confirm or refute this assertion). I also love that the illustrations are large in size, instead of the tiny pictures that are sometimes packed into neotropical field guides.
The layout of this guide is also different from most large-format Latin American field guides. Instead of a couple of dozen separate color plates in the center of the book like Stiles & Skutch, this new book has illustrations on every right-hand page (166 plates in all), with a short description of the bird on the facing (left) page. The descriptive info is brief, but often includes important field marks, habitat, and vocalizations. I also love the inclusion of range maps on the same page, a cool feature missing from most of the other Costa Rica field guides.
Overall, this book does not have the comprehensive scope of Stiles & Skutch, but it delivers what it promises -- a pocket-sized (well, 7.5" x 5" x 1"), beautifully illustrated field guide focusing on field identification. I have three bird field guides for CR, and already this one is my favorite.
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31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Beautifully compact, May 11, 2007
I got my copy today of this new FG to the Birds of Costa Rica. As I also own the older book by Stiles and Skutch, the first impression was how small this new field guide is, compared to the older one. Very unusual for a FG of a tropical country. The old book weighs in at 895 grams, whereas Garrigues & Dean is a mere 557 grams. A considerable difference for any traveller. It is clear that this comes at a price: There is VERY little text for each species. Not as little as in the ill-reputed Birds of Peru (Clements & Shany), though. The book's text is patterned more along the lines of Birds of Argentina & Uruguay (Narosky & Yzurieta) which I had come to appreciate very much on a trip a bit more than a year ago. Key characteristics are printed in bold face for a very fast orientation. There is some information on habitats, elevation, frequency and size. In some cases, voices are mentioned as well. Most welcome are the decent, i.e. not too small range maps. The general arrangement for each species follows well proven lines: text and range maps are facing the plates. There are usually four to six species per page. In general, there are two or three illustrations per species, often male and female and/or a flight picture. The plates, to me, look a bit inconsistent. Mostly, that is due to some faded looks of some of the plates (e.g. many, but not all of the hummingbirds, ovenbirds, and antbirds). This is why I give this book only 4 stars. I do not know whether this is due to the originals or whether these are printing problems. E.g. in my book, the Emerald Toucanet on the cover is considerably darker than the same species on page 153. If I recall it correctly, the cover is closer to the true bird. But it is too long since I have seen it in nature. Overall, I can't judge the accuracy of both text and range maps as well as the plates. I'm sure we will get some info on this in due time from others. Personally, there are species where I prefer the pictures in the older field guide. But overall, I think this book will be the one any birder visiting the country will now want to take along.
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