Customer Reviews

Birds of Southern South America and Antarctica (Collins Illustrated Checklist)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

(From Planeta magazine) - Every bird species you may come across in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruaguay and southern Boliva and Brazil is described here, with more than 1,000 species illustrated in color. The text compliments the visuals, providing info about habitat, sounds and identification features. Excellent!

This book is a very good guide. The thing I like most about it is its size. It is actaully smaller than "Birds of North America". It is a field guide not a desk reference like Howell and Webb "Birds of Mexico", that is about 3x larger or Hilty "Birds of Venezuela" 4x larger. These two books are actually too large to use as field guides. Many rip out the illustrations and bind them separately, because the books are too big to lug around. The only reason it did not receive 5 stars is because the range maps are in the back of the book. But "Birds of Costa Rica" does not even have range maps and it is considered excellent by many.

I was extremely frustrated using this book on my recent trip to Antarctica and South Georgia. Some of the plates do not do an accurate job of depicting the birds and the distribution maps are also not entirely accurate. The professional ornithologist on my trip agreed with my observations and recommended that I purchase another book: "Birds of Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, and the Antarctic Peninsula" by E. Couve and C. Vidal.

This guide book covers a wide range of habitats: from the jungle tropics to the southern tip of the continent and even Antactica. If you are going to be traveling widely, this guide might well be your best bet. The illustrations are good and the descriptions on the facing page are quite useful. The major drawback is that the distribution maps are at the back and that's annoying. (Once you've found an illustration that seems to identify the bird you're seeing, you need to note both the plate and illustration number before heading back to the range maps to see if it's likely to be found in your present location. All too often I found that wasn't the case!)

If you're going to do your birdwatching in or near the mountains or along the southern coast, I'd suggest that you carefully consider, instead, Birds of Chile by Jaramillo et al, a Princeton Guide. It's a superb field guide with many illustrations of the birds in flight, as well as sitting still; its descriptions are excellent and the range maps are on the facing page. I bought a copy of it on my return from Patagonia and it's definitely the guide I'll take next time -- not only to Chile, but to southern Argentina, as well!

It was the first time for me in South America, so I didn't know nothing about the birds there. I had the chance to find this guide, which helped me very much, thanks to the good figures. The text is a little bit poor, but for a beginner it's enough. For some families like the Furnariids and the Tyrannids the figures weren't always good for recognising the species in the field. But, in general, I found this guide very useful and the best between all other guides of the region which I saw.

I found this guide to be occasionally inaccurate and lacking much needed info for any serious birding, though it is useful as a backup/reference for other area guides. Instead of this book, I recommend you consider "Birds of Argentina & Uruguay" by Tito Narosky and Dario Yzurieta. If not easy to find on Amazon, try Birdlife International, or just pick up a copy in Buenos Aires.

Since there are few complete pocket guides for South America I though that this was worth a chance. However, there are areas for improvement- many of the illustrations are strangely proportioned- heads are too big or too small, bodies elongated or squat, and so forth. The poor use of space on the plates is surprising for a book produced by Princeton. To top in all off the maps are all in the back of the book, meaning that you are constantly flipping back and forth. I ordered this with "Birds of South America" by Erize et al., which is of a similar format and also published by Princeton. No problems with that book at all...but too bad I can't recommend this one...

This appears to be a compact but comprehensive field guide to the birds of southern South America. The art work is adequate, but the plates are crowded and disorganized, and it is sometimes difficult to find the specific number you are looking for to coordinate with the printed information. The other drawback is that the range maps are at the back of the book, a failing common to many older guides. In the absence of anything better, this should serve the purpose well.

We travelled down the coast of South America and on to the Antarctic Peninsula, then back up the South Atlantic via the Falkland Islands to debark the cruise ship at Buenos Aires. We then spent a month birding Argentina. We practically wore this book out, as it is the only one with such breadth as to cover most of that journey; otherwise we'd have needed a library weighing tens of kilos and costing hundreds of dollars. The book is laid out well, and although we had an initial objection to the range maps being in a separate section, this feature turned out to be quite useful, since we could quickly rule out related species due to range by quick view of a single page.

The illustrations are not of the quality one associates with a book from Sibley, Peterson, or Ridgely, but in most cases they were adequate for ID. I'd recommend this book to anyone visiting multiple countries in South America, especially if you are lucky enough to be able to cross to Antarctica.

The book is somewhat out of date as to naming and Taxonomy, but that is to be expected from the date of publishing. I'd buy a more recent edition in a minute.

I took this book and also Birds of Chile by Alvaro Jaramillo with me to Chilean Patagonia. I found the Jaramillo book better. The bird names are on the plates by the illustration whereas in Birds of Southern South America many more species needed to be illustrated so they are numbered on the plates. Also, Birds of Chile puts the range maps opposite the plates, and in full color. Birds of Southern South America puts the colorless maps at the back of the book. Still, it's a good field guide, but covers a broader area than I needed for Chilean Patagonia and its deficiencies are traceable to the need to include more species.