Customer Reviews

A Field Guide to the Birds of Brazil

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Basics: softcover, 187 color plates of all 1,800+ species in Brazil; short paragraph of minimal identification or description notes along with simple description of the voice; brief habitat notes; a 9-colored range map for each bird

This book is one of very few books to cover all the birds of Brazil. The other books available today (Sep 2009) either have inferior artwork (Souza) or no identification text (Sigrist) or cover only the passerines from the entire continent (Ridgely). Without a doubt, you'll want and need this book when birding in Brazil. It's a bit larger (9.5 x 6.5 inches) and heavier than a usual smaller field guide, but its content makes it a requirement to be carried in your larger pocket.

The bulk of this book is its 187 color plates which illustrate all 1,800+ species in the country. Each plate contains about 10 species with multiple illustrations of each for about 80% of the birds. It seems most of the birds with only one illustration are the passerines, notably the woodcreepers, spintetails, foliage-gleaners, antpittas, and much of the flycatcher family. The multiple illustrations of a bird depict the gender differences and the plumage variations between some of the races and subspecies; however, these races are not always identified in the text. The plates often only refer to the variations with an "a" or "b" next to them.

The quality of the artwork between the plates varies between simply okay to good. As an example, the pelican, herons, tropicbirds, owls, some hummingbirds, puffbirds, tapaculos, and tityras can be sketchy, as if a first good draft was sufficient enough for this initial publication. In contrast, the artistry and detail can be quite nice in some of the woodcreepers, antbirds, flycatchers, and warblers. As a last note on the plates, some of the illustrations lean towards the smaller size. Some are simply too small (e.g., the Purpletufts) and leave much of the page as blank white space. There is definitely room to enlarge many of the birds. I suspect the smaller size was an artifact of trying to maintain relative size with the other species on the plate.

Each bird receives a brief paragraph (4-10 short lines) across from its plate. This information is very concise and often provides only the minimum of information on identification. As an example, the description on the Brown-breasted Pygmy-Tyrant simply says, "Loral spot is buff, not white". The Klages's Antwren reads, "Resembles [bird] 106.2 but less extensive streaking below". These tidbits are helpful, but lack depth or additional notes that will be needed for many of the similar birds in Brazil. For a few of the birds, some short notes are given to differentiate between the more frustratingly similar birds. The remainder of the paragraph consists of a sentence describing the voice and another partial sentence on the bird's preferred habitat.

Next to the bird's text is a small map showing the range within Brazil. This range is not shown extending beyond the country's borders. To help give more accuracy or reference with the range, the Brazilian states are outlined and some major rivers are included. Except for some of the tiny dots representing limited ranges, the maps do a good job at being visible. Three different shades of blue, red, and green denote the abundance (aka, likelihood of finding) of the birds in winter, summer, and year-round residency.

I like the inclusion of a list of all 218 Brazilian endemics at the rear of the book along with the plate number on which the bird can be seen. An attempt to highlight the endemism of the species in the plates was done by using a blue font for the bird's name. Unfortunately, this did not print well and you must look intently at the lettering to discern if the word is black versus almost-black-but-not-quite. The code of "En" is put at the end of the bird's text as well.

As a last note, the taxonomic order of the birds mostly follows conventional practice. However, as the author noted in the introduction, some of the birds have been relocated to be next to "like groups". Consequently, it took me a while to find the tinamous. Normally located on the first plate, these birds were found later on plate 27 between the hawks and guans.

This is a most welcome book and is definitely the best guide available today. You must have this book if you're serious about birding in Brazil. It will be nice to see two new Brazilian bird books by Zimmer (2010) and by Grantsau (2010). -- (written by Jack, shown with sample pages at Avian Review, September 2009)

As other reviewers have noted, at the moment, this is the only manageably-sized field guide in print that covers the all the birds of Brazil. Several other field guides are currently in the works (most notably Kevin Zimmer, and I believe Bret Whitney is also working on one) so hopefully within a few years there will be plenty of choice. However, if you are going to Brazil now, despite its shortcomings, you need this book.

A big disapointment is that the Illustrations are really fairly poor for the most part. Van Perlo is just not that good an illustrator. Also, the design of the color plates is not good, with many bird images being tiny little specks on a big sea of blank page. Most of the illustrations seem good enough to ID the species, which I guess is the point, but you will not sit down with this book and just love looking thru the illustrations.

Other than this, the book seems well thought out. I just got it, so I haven't used it in the field or even sat down for a good long study session. The plates are on the right hand side and the corresponding text and range maps are on the left. Because Brazil is so big, it is useful to have detailed range maps that cover only it and not all of SA.

Much better, much more beautiful and much larger and more useful illustrations can be found in the new Ridgely/Tudor passerines book, though this one is large and heavy (even in paperback) and covers all of SA. On a trip to Brazil, I'd take the Perlo, but I'd also take Ridgely/Tudor. On a trip to Peru this summer, my guide and I were only able to ID several difficult birds by checking the excellent, accurate illustrations in Ridgely/Tudor.

Other books you could take, if you still have room in your luggage and have been doing your weight training at the gym, are the two Princeton illustrated checklists for the Non-Passerines of SA and (for southern Brazil) the birds of Southern SA. These are both fairly small in size and are pretty useful in the field.

Have to say that I can't put the book down. Well-made book and very complete. All species covered and illustrated (including many subspecies) with brief data and excellent maps (highlighting States and main cities) adjacent. I have all of Mr. Van Perlo's books and this one is probably the best one (though the Mexico/Central America is my personal favorite). The book is a little larger than his other books. Resilient-looking soft cover.

I bought von Perlo's field guide because it was the only portable field guide available at the time to the birds of Brazil - and even then it is heavy. It's big, but so is the number of birds he deals with. At first glance (it arrived shortly before my trip) I was disappointed. The illustrations are fairly small and not very good. Maybe his other guidebooks are better. But many birds were recognizable on a quick look-through and there seemed nothing else I could take with me to Manaus, so it was packed away and off I went.
On arriving in Brazil I had a chance to go through it carefully and realized that several plates were misprinted - the colour yellow was missing - so the kingfishers and several hummingbird plates are in shades of blue and pink (no greens). I wonder how many other copies are around like this. Then I tried to identify what turned out to be a palm tanager - he shows this as a pale greyish bird when they are rather olive green with brownish coppery wings. His red-eyed vireo didn't look anything like the red-eyed vireos in the trees above me. To save space, the text is shrunk down to the point where it is almost useless - field pointers as to colour were minimal. The distribution (and seasonal) maps were of great use, and his call descriptions did make sense to me, and did help me (these features are why he has 3 stars not 2). I used the Brazilian WikiAves and several other sites to check every bird that I was unsure of (once back in accommodation) - but still have a pile of notes on mystery birds. His tyrannulets and such-like were impossible.
I had been to South America once before (Ecuador) and so had some idea of the families and genera of the birds that I was looking at. If I had not, I would have been rather lost with Mr von Perlo. His book is useful, yes, but also immensely frustrating as it is very hard to work out what the birds actually are, just by using his book. I will buy the Guy Tudor illustrated book mentioned by some of the other reviewers and see if I can finally identify my problem birds!

There is not much to be added to the previous reviews. But I must say that I have somewhat mixed feelings about this book.

On the one hand, I very much like its contents, as far as I can tell from a brief first inspection. Overall, very fine illustrations, and the book has the classic layout with the text AND range maps both being opposite the plates.

So why my mixed feelings? Well, this is a field guide, and it is unnecessarily large. For one, there is a broad (21 mm wide) grey band at the top that I consider basically superfluous. The page and plate numbers could have been fitted without that band. Overall, I think a full inch or 25 mm could have been lopped off in the book's height. And at least one cm could have been taken off in its width as well. That would have resulted in a book that would be quite a bit more compact. As it is now, many plates look like there is an awful lot of white space all around the illustrations. And if the publishers had chosen a print with just slightly less space between the lines, the book could have been made even more compact. Edit 2010: As a comparison, this book weighs in at a bit more than one kilogram, whereas a new compact field guide (published in 2010) for Colombia weighs a mere 400 grams. And the two countries have a comparable number of bird species. Sure the Colombia guide is a bit suffering from its compactness, but something in-between the two extremes would be ideal for a field guide that covers over 1800 species.

Somehow, I can't avoid the suspicion that there will be a more compact version in the future, after everybody has bought the large one. Doesn't this look like a business strategy we already know from other field guides? It may make economic sense, but it does not further the goodwill of the buyers. I have now made it my policy that I only get the more compact version if I really visit the area. Alternatively, one might also opt for not buying this book now, waiting for the more compact version, or the forthcoming competing books if one has no plans to visit the area in the near future.

Easy to use when studying for a trip. Concise info for each bird plus map. Bird pictures arranged on page in sensible manner. Surprisingly heavy! Can't comment yet on how accurate the drawings are. Common, scientific, and Portuguese names all in one index.

This book is a practical field guide to take with you while birding in Brazil. It contains the 1800 species that we know are here, without adding a lot of speculatory and poorly documeneted migrants and accidentals. I agree with other reviews that the book is well vetted whereas the alternative, Sigurst, occasionally gets it wrong. The illustrations are usable, like any illustrated guide, not all the illustrations are the best they could be. The descriptions are sucinct and useful for field identification. The print is readable under the low light conditions that you might experience in the Amazon Rainforest. One critisism that I have is that it would have been useful to print the accepted name of each species in Portuguese. Guides should of course know the names of all 1800 species in all the langauges they are qualified to guide in, but occasionally they forget the name on one language but not another, and it would be very useful for both guides and clients to have the name in both languages. Yes, several other books are set to be published. These are books that you will no doubt want to read cover to cover; but, none of them are likely to replace this simple practical hands on guide to field identification.

Meh. This book has so much promise. Unfortunately the printing is dark, many of the colors of the excellent illustrations are not readable due to the printing. Pictures are made much much too small for the large size format. Field marks identification clues are few and far between (the most common is XXX is "unmistakeable" - if it's unmistakeable, save the space for something that is!). I found several errors in my first ten minutes of browsing.

As another reviewer wrote - its the only game in town. Hopefully, if there's a second edition, some thought will be given to what a field guide should look like?
Here's a hint - take a look at the 2004 edition of Birds of Argentina & Uruguay: A Field Guide by Dario Yzurieta and Tito Narosky.

Comprehensive field guide, but some of the colors in the plates not as good as they could be. Maps, accompanying each description and illustration, show the distribution of each species, so it is easy to eliminate many of the very similar species on distribution alone.

New field guide to the birds of Brazil, after Souza's "All the birds of Brazil. An identification guide". Undoubtly Van Perlo's work is much better than its predecessor. Reliable illustrations to make the main distinction between both books, but also the texts are finest and provides whole information to identification in the field. Describes every species and many subespecies (but not all of them).