Customer Reviews

A Field Guide to the Birds of Korea

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Basics: 2000, 1st edition, softcover, 328 pages, 119 color plates; all 450+ species; range map for each bird

This book is a standard identification guide with plates on the right and accompanying text and range map on the left. The authors created this book to reflect all species in the entire Korean peninsula; thus, a few marginal birds are included that may not be seen by birders visiting only South Korea. The book does a good job of illustrating the various plumage differences between gender, ages, seasons, and some phases. There is a near absence of subspecies being addressed in the plates or the text.

The artistry effectively brings out the key identification points of the birds. While the illustrations are quite good, I'll have to disagree with the coloration of the pipits and larks as well as with some of the sparrows and warblers. These birds appear to be too light in color for the grays and browns. However, I suspect this may be due to an overall muted, or faintly washed-out appearance due to the printing efforts rather than to the artists.

The text of one concise paragraph focuses on a physical description of the bird, but does not compare similar species. A couple more brief lines address habitat and vocalizations.

Upon opening this field guide, you might think you've seen it before, if not three times before. Much of this book's illustrations are taken directly from the earlier works of Birds of Taiwan (chinese only, 1991) and A Field Guide to the Waterbirds of Asia (1993). Some of the borrowed illustrations appear to have undergone some touch-ups. The color is also a tiny bit faded in this Korean book. The second similarity is the range maps. The same template and color scheme was borrowed from an even earlier work, A Field Guide to the Birds of Japan by the WBSJ (1982). As a plus, these range maps have been updated with a bit more detail.

This book will be very useful to you in both Korea and most of Japan. In fact, it might be your best available English book for Japan since the English version of the Birds of Japan has been out of print since the 1980s and is typically priced, if even found, at US$100 or higher. The Japanese version is still in print as of 2007.

I've listed several related books below...
1) A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Japan and North-East Asia by Shimba
2) A Field Guide to the Birds of China by MacKinnon/Phllipps
3) The Bird of Korea by Gore/Won
4) Coloured Wild Birds of Korea
5) Wild birds of Korea by Yoon (ISBN 8909016698)

I have my eyes keenly focused on Mark Brazil's new guide "Birds of East Asia", due out in March 2009, but until then this is hands down the best guide available for northeast Asia, as Birds of Japan is long out of print and hard to find. It is also the best guide for the southern Russian Far East, although some of the more northern species (some owls, raven, etc.) are omitted as they do not occur on the Korean peninsula.

This title can be found with a little effort from Korean online booksellers for far less that the price offered here (as of 30 December 2008, Seoul Selection has it listed for [...]