Customer Reviews

The Birds of Ecuador: Field Guide

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This field guide to the birds of Ecuador is the first covering this small country with a staggering 1600 species of birds.

The text, focusing on identification and describing appearance, habitat, habits, and voice, is detailed and incorporates the latest information from the people most knowledgeable about Ecuador's birds. The paintings on the 96 plates are beautiful, among the finest of any field guide anywhere, and seem thoroughly accurate. The birds are painted in standardized poses, which allows a focus on identification. Unlike almost all field guides to countries in the tropics, all are by one artist, with the resulting benefits of consistency. The guide seems to make the identification of difficult families like flycatchers or antbirds or Ecuador's 132 species of hummingbirds easier (well, less impossible) than ever. Unlike other South American guides, all species, including migrants, are illustrated, and all in color.

The 1600 species distribution maps are not at the world-class level of North American maps or even the new India guide, but they are tremendously helpful and, given the state of information in the tropics, a great accomplishment and a major advance. It is convenient that they are right in the text, with altitude information (critical for the Andean region) attached.

Since Ecuador has about half of the species in South America, this book will be valuable for anyone looking at birds in the Amazon basin or northern South America.

Note that the field guide is volume 2 of the set. Volume I has detailed information on taxonomy, status, and especially occurence and distribution within Ecuador, plus general information about Ecuadorian geography and ornithology, which would have made the field guide impossibly large. (It's massive as is.)

I finally ordered this magnificent guide, and now I wish I would have bought it sooner. This should be on every travelling birder's bookshelf. Just glancing through the plates makes me just want to hop aboard the next flight to Quito. Before buying this title, I heard plenty of contrasting opinions on the quality of Greenfield's plates. Being quite picky with artwork, and prefering that of the elite artists (Ian Lewington, Tim Worfolk, etc) I was a bit nervous. But overall I feel that the plates are very good. The colors, in particular, are very bright, and the plates are aesthetically pleasing. In comparison to Guy Tudor's plates (found in the Colombia and Venezuela Guides), I feel Greenfield measures up very well. I'll admit that some birds aren't drawn as well as Tudor's, but many of his plates are better than those in the Colombia guide. I would definitely take the Ecuador guide to Colombia or Peru, along with those countries' respective guides. As for the text, it is very detailed and distribution maps are placed right beside the text so you don't have to keep flipping around. The maps contain elevation information, and show the locations of two principal cities (Quito and Guayaquil-spelling?) for reference. I haven't yet seen volume 1, but I am assuming it is just as impressively done.

I just returned from a trip from Ecuador where I used extensively Volume II of Ridgely et als' book. Having already some acqaitance with both the birdlife of the Neotropics and the bird books on the region I found the plates and the text still very useful when identifying the birds I and my travel mates saw. The weight and the size of the book is, however, making its use very difficult out in the field. The paperback editions did not hold very well during the three weeks, and publishing the book in 3 rather than two volumes could have helped that a lot. Even though the plates do not live up to the quality of the standard dictated by Guy Tudor in the, yet, two-volume handbook on South american birds, but I still found the pictures very informative. The text on habitat, altitudinal distribution, call, and the range maps often helped to narrow down the number of look-alike-species to a manageable level, especially when identifying hummingbirds or tyrant flycatchers.
All in all (and getting back to the question in the title) I could not call this book a champion in the league of field guides for being overweight (just try to carry it on the 'D' trail near Bellavista), although it truly deserves the four stars for the text and the plates alike. If you use it as a 'hotel' rather than a field guide or need it as a reference work for your home library (or have the plates and the text of Vol. II rebound separetely, as I did) you will appreciate the amount of information gathered in this book.

The Birds of Ecuador Field Guide is a spectacular but overwhelming book, essential for any birding trip to Ecuador, and very useful in surrounding countries, too. Covering nearly 1500 species, it weighs in at over 3 1/2 lbs. The bulk of the book is not the fault of the authors but of the fabulous diversity of bird life in Ecuador. The book follows the plan of most older guidebooks with the color plates in one section and the black and white text and maps in another. This was required by the economics of printing in the past, but is really not necessary now (see Sibley, etc). The birding guides we met in Ecuador all carry the plates of the book, dissected out and carefully rebound to create a smaller portable volume -- the publisher should offer the same convenience and sell this book in two parts. Bird descriptions are detailed and careful, similar species and how to differentiate them are described. The guide book follows a tradition that I have always found unhelpful -- that of trying to describe a birds voice in words e.g. "pt-weet", "ti-lee-lee" etc. The Ecuadorian birding experts we met all were able to point out some innaccuracies in the book, mostly in the range maps, and occasionally in coloration, but overall the book is a great achievement.

(The copy we received from Amazon, and took with us, had 4 pages missing right in the middle of the almost-impossible flycatchers, but they replaced the faulty copy on our return without any quibble, and we now have a pristine copy ready for our next trip.)

This book is described as a field guide, but it is rather large and heavy for that. A friend who has traveled often to pursue the sight of the birds of the world gave me this advice: Take the book to Kinkos, or some such place, and have the center removed and bound. This book is suitable for that. All the color plates are in the center; a page of descriptions is opposite each plate. Of course when you return from your trip you can keep the two together with no more inconvenience than one has anyway with a bird book which has all the plates in the middle.

The rest of the book consists of more extensive descriptions of each bird and has a map for each, giving its range. This book is intended to be only half of a two volume set, the other volume being -- I don't know what, since I don't have it -- but of interest only to the most serious ornithologist who might be spending a long time in Ecuador.

Ridgley's Birds of Ecuador was an indispensable birding guide used on a recent trip (2005) to experience the natural history of Ecuador -the highlands, coast and Galapagos Islands. I brought along the soft cover edition which contains an informative map showing the ecoregions of Ecuador and this should be consulted before visiting so as to help better understand the geography, climate and ecosystems and where a particular species might be observed. Helpful hints include comparisons to similar Neotropical migrants. Most of the color plates are beautifully rendered and I would recommend Ridgley's guide to anyone who wants to know the birds they are seeing while in Ecuador and surrounding regions.

This is an exhaustive book with brilliant drawings - but not a field guide. Forget what the publishers say about two volumes and this one being the field guide. It's hideously impractical. It's over 700 pages, thicker than your fist, and a HEAVY load to be lugging around and getting it into an out of your backpack, especially when hiking or navigating slippery jungle trails in the sweltering heat. That said, I don't know of any other field guide and let's face it, we birders need a field guide. As many others I have had the plates with the drawings taken out and bound into a 'new' book, and brought only that with me. It's suboptimal, but hey, what can you do.

A great bird book for Ecuador - well, maybe the only "real" bird Guide to Ecuador! It is very complete but very big and heavy to be lugging around. We tend to use the plates more in the field for ID work and the write-ups back at base-camp. So ... we cut out the section containing all the plates and had it re-bound at Staples for a couple of dollars - re-glued with protective covers and added a bunch of blank pages at the end of the re-bound book for field notes. We taped the remaining two sections of the book back together and - voila, two seperate books - one, a hundred pages of great plates and the other, a lot more pages of species info. Then in the plate book, using a code, we marked the species to be expected in a particular area (M = Mindo, G = Galapagos, etc.) Works great that way.

A great book if you are planning a birding trip to Ecuador. Very thorough and informative. Although a little bulky to carry around, I suggest taking out the plate pages with all the bird pictures and reading up on them at the end of the day. It's a shame to rip apart a wonderful book like this but it really was a space and weigh saver

I just received my copy of the The Birds of Ecuador and am very
pleased with it. I think the plates are very good with a lot of
detail. I compared plates for the same species in the book: A Guide To The Birds of Costa Rica, an excellent book also, and
found the detail to be better in The Birds of Ecuador. I also
really like the distribution maps for each species. I am
planning to do a birding trip to Ecuador and the maps will help
in making the travelling plans.