Author: Clive Barlow, Tim Wacher
By Christopher Helm Publishers Ltd

Excellent field guide, 2008-05-20
I own birding field guides to various countries and regions of the world and this is perhaps the most helpfully laid out of them all. The text includes authoritative yet concise descriptions for each species, along with notes on habits, status and distribution. The sections on separating similar species are also very useful.

The quality of the colour plates is generally extremely good, though the illustrations of a few species are relatively poor due to maintaining a single scale for each plate. (e.g. Quail Plover doesn't stand a chance when placed alongside Helmeted Guineafowl!)

As in any field guide, there are a few errors in the text, notably in the accounts of Short-toed and Beaudouin's Eagles (though I understand this reflects the confusion over the separation of these species current at the time of publication).

The book also suffers from a relatively weak binding. After intensive use in the field the covers tend to come off. Field guides should be tougher than this!

A second edition to iron out these deficiencies and to reflect the advances in knowledge of the birds of Gambia in the last ten years would be very valuable.

These deficiencies, however, are minor, and do not negate the fact that all in all this is an excellent field guide. I recommend it highly birders visiting Gambia

Author: Jemima Parry-Jones
By David & Charles PLC

Understanding Owls is excellent, 2002-08-01
I bought this book and hoped that it did what it said on the cover - namely showed me how to understand owls! It didn't let me down, it is excellent. It explained all about owls, buying, weighing, housing, training etc all in good details, and all written with wit making it an interesting and enjoyable read. It doesn't preach like some books, (expecting only those who live in the middle of the countryside with 10 acres of land at their disposal own owls), but teaches with common sense and understanding and tells us our potential pitfalls and remedies for a whole host of issues. I recommend this book to anyone interested in owls whether they own one already or not - it is an informative guide and very well written. Definitely worth its money.

Author: Floyd E. Hayes, Martyn Kenefick, Robin L. Restall
By Christopher Helm Publishers Ltd

The new best guide to T&T, 2008-04-13
Just back from T&T, I found the guide very useful and easy to use. The plates aren't perfect, some of the colours can be misleading on some of the plates, but overall the illustrations are very good.

It is light, portable and easy to use in the field and has handy pointers to identifying similar species. The guide lacks detail on habits, but there are other guides that cover this. One complaint would be that the species are indexed by plate number rather than page number. I can't see any good reason for this, it just causes confusion.

Author: Tony Clarke
By Christopher Helm Publishers Ltd

Lots of information, 2008-10-12
This is an excellent book which i bought to take on a trip to the islands of Cape Verde. I found the book very helpful in detailing what i could expect to see on islands as a whole and on each of the individual islands. I found the information provided to be accurate and informative and highly recommend it to other birders.

Author: Carol Inskipp, Richard Grimmett, Tim Inskipp
By Christopher Helm Publishers Ltd

Good comprehensive pocket guide, but has a few drawbacks., 2001-12-08
Well illustrated pictures and for the keener bird watcher, it's got all the species. The maps are clear, though not always near the pictures/text. It is confusingly classified (not the standard order). Naming follows the American system which is also confusing. In the area bird watchers will refer to species by their English names, so Grimmett is not helpful in this way. It would be better if it included commonly used names as well. An example of the confusion is with what is commonly called the 'blossom-headed parakeet' Psittacula cyanocephala. In Grimmett this is called the 'plum-headed' and, more confusingly, there's another called the 'blossom-headed' (P. roseata). Also, nobody in India seems to call a purple moorhen a purple gallinule.
However, it's a good all-round book. Combined with another which has the ordinary names and a bit more information, it was a good choice. (I took Collins Handguide to the birds of the Indian Sub-continent as well, which gives more info about the more common species).
I hope this review is helpful.

Author: Paul Sterry
By Christopher Helm Publishers Ltd

Author: Mark Golley
By New Holland Publishers Ltd

Author: Richard Garrigues
By Christopher Helm Publishers Ltd

The new Costa Rica bird guide - perfect for the field!, 2008-06-05
Written by the two foremost authorities on the subject, and long the standard field guide, A Guide to the Birds of Costa Rica is now almost 20 years old and showing its age. For the past decade, there has been a clear need for a new edition of the book to incorporate recently recorded species, modernise taxonomy and bring distributional information up-to-date. And since most visiting birders take issue with weight, preferring to carry the excised plates alone (despite the relative strength of the text), any attempt to reduce the size of a new edition would have been welcomed.

Here we have not a new edition of Stiles & Skutch, but what the author prefers to call an alternative. The first feature most visitors will enjoy is the reduction in bulk. My old guide weighs about 1kg (2.2 lbs) and needs to be carried in a pack, whereas Garrigues & Dean is just shy of 600g (1.4 lbs) and will fit in a medium-sized coat pocket. Secondly, the plates face the text, so there is no need to flip between the two. Maps are provided along side the text, reducing the need for the detailed range descriptions that are often so confusing to the visitor. The text itself is more concise than the earlier guide and emphasises identification features - something that Stiles & Skutch did not do. As for the plates, they are a marked improvement on the old illustrations. They have clearly been painted with care and diligence and are much more useful in distinguishing similar species than the previous artwork - all credit to the artist! Boreal migrants, such as shorebirds, thrushes, swallows and warblers, are illustrated which means that one can for the first time just get by without a North American field guide - though given the difficulty in identifying these groups, it would be wiser to carry a North American guide too. And, of course, the guide is pretty well up-to-date on bird names, following AOU taxonomy.

Does the new guide supersede Stiles & Skutch? Not really, but perhaps that does not matter. This is now the guide that most birders will want to take in the field. Well organised, portable and with accurate illustrations, it is the guide that birding visitors and general travellers have been waiting for all these years. Nevertheless, for the moment at least, birders and naturalists will also want to have a copy of Stiles & Skutch, even if it stays back at the hotel - or even back home. The text of Stiles & Skutch contains so much diligently compiled and fascinating natural history information that it remains far from obsolete.

At a time when so many neotropical avifaunas are treated in two volume works - a "field guide" and a "species accounts" or "distribution" tome - one might view Birds of Costa Rica in the same light. Garrigues & Dean is the field guide, while Stiles & Skutch provides the non-essential detail. Both will be accompanying me on my next trip to Costa Rica in a month's time.

Chris Sharpe, 5 June 2008. ISBN: 0713683694

Author: Julian Fitter, Mark Jones, Tui De Roy
By Christopher Helm Publishers Ltd

Author: D. Collins, A.G. Clarke
By Prion Ltd