Customer Reviews

Photographic Guide to the Birds of Jamaica

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Of the many small photo guides to have come out over the past five years, I like the format of this one the best. The success of this book is the larger, multiple photos of each bird. The quality, color, and lighting of every bird are very good as well.

This book contains 488 photos of 220 species that regularly occur on Jamaica. Nearly all of these birds are shown with more than one photo. Each of the 30 endemic species has at least two photos, many have up to four. The color and poses in each of the four shots of the Jamaican Tody are stunning. An excellent sampling of photos is also given for each of the three Myiarchus flycatchers which display the key identification points quite well. You can see the pale base to the mandible or the shading differences in the wing bars.

The amount of text for each bird varies between migrants and residents, with the latter receiving the most. The information is about one-half page with 60-80% of it focused on identification, description, and similar species. This information does a good job at pointing out key features of the similar species. The rest of the text covers voice as well as habitat and behavior.

I was glad to see range maps included for each bird. These maps use dark and light shadings of three different colors (green, yellow, blue) to represent common and uncommon status as a resident, summer visitor, or winter visitor. The maps do a good job at showing some detail, trying to follow geographic features or habitat; however, it would have been helpful to include a few dots to represent some cities/towns as reference.

A 31-page section at the beginning of the book does a nice job of giving a thorough overview of Jamaica's geomorphology, habitat types, avifauna, altitudinal movements, and general information for birders.

This book is a vast improvement on the already good book by Sutton/Downer of 1990. The photos are of higher quality, are larger with a greater number for each bird, and cover all of Jamaica's regular birds. Although I normally prefer and recommend an illustrated guide over a photo guide for field use, this book will easily aid you in all your identification needs across the island. -- (written by Soleglad at Avian Review / Avian Books, July 2009)

I've listed several related books below...
1) Birds of Jamaica: A Photographic Field Guide by Downer, Audrey and Robert Sutton
2) Photographic Guide to Birds of Jamaica and the West Indies, A by Flieg
3) A Field Guide to the 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
7) Bird-Watching in Jamaica by Jeffrey-Smith

This book is currently the best bird guide available for Jamaica. In the past, photographic illustrations were not ideal as you needed to show the birds at the right angle, the right stance or in different plumage to allow for good identification. So it was best done with drawings, but not anymore. The authors have gone to extreme lengths to source the perfect images to describe each bird species that reside or frequents the island of Jamaica. The quality of the images is jaw-droppingly stunning. The information provided is well presented. My few negatives so far are:
1. the color coded distribution maps sometimes gives the impression that a species is not expected in a particular area by being completely void of color but in actuality a lack of color only means lack of knowledge for those areas. It caught me at first but once you understand what it means you get to appreciate it. It gives the impression however, that the authors could have spent more time researching to fill out those blank spaces a little more.
2. it is a paperback. This means that it is very portable but also not that durable. After my fist use i noticed some of the pages started to separate from the binding. A hard-cover edition would really be welcomed especially since it is such a thin book that the hard cover would not make it heavy at all.

This field guide is highly recommended but take care of it. What i did, was to get 2 copies and keep one on my bookshelf in mint condition for reference and use the other one in the field. After all, the top picture on page 113 is my handy-work.

I haven't used this book in the field yet, but it seems to be a well written book with good introductory material about the island and birding locations. The bird photos and descriptions seem well written.