Customer Reviews

A Guide to the Birds of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands: (Revised Edition)

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

 

 

As a professional Puerto Rican biologist and bird watcher I found this book to be the best field guide of birds occuring at Puerto Rico. It covers as well, introduced, migratory, and endemic or native species with a full description of each bird characteristics and accompanying color plates that match the birds color patterns up to the last feather. It is a must have to any bird enthusiast living or visiting the Island, as well as for students or professional biologists.

An extremely well-written and well-illustrated book with especially helpful and detailed text on habitat, behavior, and locales. On a recent trip to Puerto Rico for birding, we found this book to be extraordinarily helpful. Since we have come home to the Continental USA, it continues to be rich reading.

Basics: 1989, revised edition, softcover, 254 pages, 24 color and 17 b&w plates, 284 species, no range maps

This is one of the few books to focus on the birds of Puerto Rico. Its field guide size makes the book convenient to carry and the illustrations are good enough to help identify nearly every bird that can be found on the island. The Puerto Rican endemics are nicely distinguished by having either a single color plate dedicated to the bird or by having a distinctive blue sphere surround the bird if it's on a plate with other species. Distinguishing the endemic is a very handy feature that should be used in other regional field guides. I would like to have seen more attention and illustrations given to the endemics, such as the Puerto Rican Vireo or the Puerto Rican Flycatcher. Each has only one image, which fails to show the variation that can exist in the fresh vs. worn plumages.

The text, making up the latter two-thirds of the book, covers the standard information of identification, voice, nesting (if applicable), distribution, and comments. The comments section often provides interesting historical, taxonomic, habitat, and behavioral tidbits. These are nice additions to a field guide.

Two nice features have been included into the back of the book. One, is a section of seven birding localities with a map, directions, and commentary on each. Two, is a checklist denoting which birds can be found at each of those localities.

I would like to see an update to this book to include range maps for this island. Yes, many of the birds might have very similar ranges, but others (e.g., Yellow-shouldered Blackbird, Puerto Rican Nightjar, Elfin Woods Warbler) have very restricted or spotty ranges.

Using only this book in Puerto Rico will be sufficient for any trip. However, my next trip will include the more up-to-date Birds of West Indies by Raffaele (paperback). The information is written a bit more clearly with additional characteristics; the drawings are moderately better; and, there are more illustrations for the endemics.

I've listed several related books below...
1) Puerto Rico's Birds in Photographs by Oberle
2) Las aves de Puerto Rico by Biaggi
3) Birds of the West Indies by Bond
4) Birds of the West Indies by Raffaele
5) A Guide to the Birds of the West Indies by Raffaele
6) Photographic Guide to Birds of the West Indies by Flieg

I have owned this book for a number of years and have been going to P.R. for over 15 years and this is by far the best book on the birds of the island. It has great maps and ideas for places to go bird watching on the island. The only setback is that i wish it had more color slides of the birds. But it does not make this a bad choice. I love my book and it is getting worn out and I will need a new one soon. Good Luck birding on a wonderful island.

I carried this very handy book around Puerto Rico and Culebra. It was particularly helpful to know the specific areas where various birds are usually found, as well as local names. Very good illustrations.

This guide is very useful. Descriptions are detailed and interesting, often with histories of the birds' settlement on the islands. Some of the plates with birds more often found on the North American continent or birds not easily mistakenly identified are in black and white, but most of the plates are in color. A helpful feature is that both English and Spanish common names for the birds are listed even though the book is in English.

I am returning this book because the pictures are half in black and white, half in color,and most of the pictures are very small. On the color plates the color is so poor that I can't even recognize birds I already know.

This plates are old, ugly. Except the PR parrot and tody which have there own page.
Birds of the west indies has much better plates but they aint picture perfect either.

This book has more information about the birds although it can be a little outdated.

Time for a major revision I would say.