Customer Reviews

Birds of Japan & East Asia (Photographic Guide)

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Basics: 2007, softcover, 504 pages, 1,500+ color photos, 600 species, range map for each bird

This photographic guide follows the same vein as other recent photographic books; it offers hundreds of color photos with good clarity and color but of a small size. Most pages have three small photos displaying an even smaller bird in the photo. It seems at least half of the photograph shows only the background. It would have been better to zoom/crop in on the bird, especially with the warblers and sparrows. I could easily cover many of the birds with just the tip of my finger.

The quality of the text is average, giving a fair description of the bird along with its voice and, sometimes a reference to a similar species. The small maps use three seasonal colors and give a general depiction of the bird's range over eastern Asia.

Is this book useful? Yes, but not as a reliable identification or field guide. It's good to see an actual photo of a bird; and, most of the photos are pretty good. This book will help the birder learn the birds of Japan, Korea, or eastern China before a visit. However, if you're serious about a pure birding trip, it wil be necessary to supplement this book with something else.

There are several other superior photographic guides to Japan, but they are written in only Japanese. Despite the language barrier, I prefer these books in tandem with an English field guide. The Japanese books are available on amazon.co.jp.

I've listed several related books below...

1) A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Japan (4582542301) in Japanese

2) Wild Birds of Japan by Kanouchi (4635070077) in Japanese

3) Birds of Japan: Photographic Field Book 15 (4635060721) in Japanese

4) Birds of Japan: Photographic Pocket Guide (4635062171) in Japanese

5) Field Guide to the Birds of Japan by the Wild Bird Society of Japan

6) A Field Guide to the Birds of Korea by Lee/Koo/Park

7) Wild Birds of Korea by Yoon

8) A Field Guide to the Birds of China by MacKinnon/Phillipps

9) Atlas of the Beijing Birds by Zhao (ISBN 7503822570)

I'm overall happy with this book. I prefer field guides with art, but I had little choice in a bird book for Japan, and most of the photos look pretty good to me. There are photos for most species of the birds in alternate and basic plumage, including both males and females if sexually dimorphic. The written text per species is fairly short, but main points are covered for identification.

I haven't used the book in Japan yet but I think it will work alright in the field. Species are organized in the same order usually seen in bird books in the west (loons to buntings), but I wish the groups were color coded along the edge of the book--so I could quickly find the sparrow section, for example. Since the book was published in the UK, British common names are used for the species. Scientific names are given for all, so ultimately there is no confusion.

An appendix in the back has a chart of what the names of the birds are in Japanese, but only in romaji (Japanese characters written as they sound with English letters) obviously so people who know no Japanese can pronounce them, but since I am learning Japanese, I wish they were shown in kanji, too. I also wish the Japanese name was given on the actual species account, but it isn't.

Notably missing is a check list for recording sightings. There are legible range maps as well as notes on when and where the species occurs in Japan. A map of Japan and north-east Asia is also included. A 20-page introduction has some useful information for those seeking birds in the area. The bird topography map on page 23 is functional, but the art is highly pixelated and, in my opinion, unattractive.

Overall, I think this book will fulfill my needs and I'm happy I bought it, though it's not quite a Peterson's.