Customer Reviews

Guia de Campo Kaufman: a las Aves Norteamericanas (Kaufman Field Guides) (Spanish Edition)

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Kenn Kaufman has done it again, taking bird guides and birding to new heights by creating a field guide for Spanish-speaking audiences in the United States and abroad. For English speaking birders, having the names of all the birds in Spanish is a great resource, but translations of the introductory material on birding, bird plumage topography, identification, and conservation are also invaluable. Opening this book is like seeing the birds of North America again for the very first time, as I learn to differentiate the Cuitlacoche de Pico Curvo from the Cuitlacoche de Pico Corto. Can you tell the difference between machos y hembras? Have you ever seen a Gorrión Arlequín? Any English birder with even a smidgen of Spanish should get a copy and enjoy their familiar birds in this new cultural world.

Now that Kaufman and translator Fischer have done the hard work of bringing this book to press, the birding community needs to step up and get the book into the hands of people who can most benefit from it. If demographics is destiny, the growing U.S. Spanish-speaking audience for this book will only make this book grow in importance as our Hispanic population expands in size and distribution across the U.S. Thanks to Kaufman and Fischer, the language barrier has been broken. Now it remains for the rest of us to help break down the cultural barriers separating birders and observadores de aves. As we learn to give nombres to our familiar birds, hopefully we can share them with our new amigos de las aves.

Kenn Kaufman, along with Patricia Manzano Fischer, have produced an outstanding field guide of North American birds in Spanish. It is a translation of the English field guide, and gives all the names of the birds in Spanish along with the scientific name (as well as the English name in parentheses.) I believe this book will allow many Spanish speaking birders to more fully enjoy birding in the U.S. and Canada, and especially here in the Southwest. This new edition will also help break the language barrier between English and Spanish speaking birders, and should be an important overall enhancement to birders since it is the first of a kind.
Los nombres en Español de las aves son nombres mexicanos. Por ejemplo, en Chile se usa el nombre Jote de Cabeza Colorada (Turkey Vulture) y en este libro se usa Zopilote Aura. Estoy totalmente de acuerdo con esto, porque la guía es para norteamérica!
It is interesting to see the bird calls and songs in Spanish. I do wish that the Pibí Mayor (Greater Pewee) could still whistle Jo-sé Mar-í-a in Spanish instead of uwirí y ti, pi,puríu......but this vocalization makes sense too.
This is a must have book for birders who want to expand their birding horizons. Thanks again, Kenn!

But beware. This is not just a useful guide for the Southwest. Most of the birds of the Chihuahuan Desert (the largest desert in North America, covering from parts of TX, NM and AZ to Central Mexico) are depicted in this guide.
I would go as far as to say that this guía is the best Spahish guide for North Central Mexico. I live in Torreon (SW Coahuila) and this is much better for this part of the country than Peterson's Aves de México.

This book is a must if you travel to the border area or are birding in areas where there is a Spanish speaking population. The names of many of the birds are not nearly as intuitively translated into Spanish as one might think. You can try all day to explain "woodpecker" but knowing "carpentero" makes short work out of asking locally where the they might be hanging out! It's also great in getting kids interested in birding and realizing that they are all different birds - evey duck is not simply a pato and every heron a garza!

If you're improving your Spanish and would like to be able to communicate information about your bird watching adventures in Spanish, this is a great book. It not only has the common name of the birds in Spanish, the latin term, but also the English common name just so you don't get confused.

Es un libro excelente yo lo vi en ingles pero en español esta muy bien, si eres de México sirve perfecto ya que muchas de las especies son migratorias por lo que también las vemos por acá

Estupendo libro para identificación de aves!! Estupendo servicio el de Amazon!!

Great book for identifying birds! Amazon's great service!