A Field Guide to the Birds of Peru [Illustré] [Anglais] [Broché]

I applaud the authors' effort to publish a field guide to birds of Peru. Compiling all the information and plates necessary to document all the ~1800 bird species in Peru must be a truly daunting task. I was initially delighted with the clear, crisp plates. Once out in the field with the book, however, my delight turned to disappointment. Most annoying to me is the poor organization of the plates. For example, large-billed and yellow-billed terns are illustrated on plate 9, along with ducks and geese. The remainder of the terns are pictured on plate 23, with the gulls. I found numerous examples such as this. Needless to say, while out in the field and trying to make a quick ID, one is not likely to happen to flip to the duck plate while looking at terns. The species descriptions also leave a lot to be desired. The text is quite sparse, with very little information regarding range, habitat type, behavior, or physical descriptions. There are no descriptions of vocalizations, although references to recordings containing vocalizations are provided for some species. On the positive side, the sparseness of the text means that this guide is light and easy to carry in the field. I'm left with the feeling that this book was rushed to press in order to fill the need for a field guide to this region. I can only hope that future editions will fix some of the errors and fill in details. For the time being, I'll rely on Birds of Colombia or Birds of Ecuador next time I'm in Peru.

Those expecting a Sibley's style field guide with pictures, maps, and bird descriptions all conveniently located on the same page will be disappointed with this guide. Having to go back and forth between picture plates, located in the middle of the volume, and text descriptions at the front or rear of the volume was Herculean pain in the you know what. I got so frustrated with lugging this heavy tomb around the mountains and jungles of Peru that I began to leave it in my lodge and rely more on guides, who also carried the book, for identification. It was easier to focus on the birds for as long as possible and then argue with the guides later over lunch about what we saw.

With that being said, this is the only comprehensive field guide for Peru's 1,800+ species of birds. With it, I saw about 188 different species on 12-day, October 2005 trip to that country. The artwork in the book is generally excellent, and while the descriptions tend to be a bit sparse compared to Sibley's Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America, they contain all the key identification features. In defense of Clements and Shany, they had to design a guide for 1,800+ birds whereas Sibley's Eastern North America pocket field guide only covers 650 species. Trying to compare the two, in short, is like comparing apples to oranges. Clements and Shany had to somehow create a guide to one of the ecologically diverse countries in the planet and still keep the production costs low enough for Amazon to offer it for just $60.00 (hint: buy it at Amazon or pay much more for it in Peru if you can even find it). Compromises had to be made, but this is still the only birding book to buy for Peru. All others only focus on small regions of the country such as the Machu Picchu area and are not useful for birders hitting multiple venues. Furthermore, the art in the Clements and Shany guide is much, much better than the art found in the regional publications.

I, for one, am getting weary of new bird books that appear to be written just for listers. How can a book on neotropical birds omit nearly all natural history information. Why are the species' descriptions distilled to just a few sentences for listers? The book comes with a lengthy erratum, apparently the book was printed in Italy, and the Sept 11 tragedy affected the receipt of information by the publishers.
But when there are many errors in a book, one has to wonder what exactly is true, and what is not true, and then respect for the book is dimmed. For example, why was Metropelia melanoptera drawn with an eye ring? When did both genera of flamingos in Peru get lumped into Phoenicopterus? The flamingo bills do not look accurate. The drawing in the front of the book of the life zones of Peru does not match up with the descriptions of the life zones a few pages later. The drawing of the wing used for nomenclature of feathers is apparently an upper wing, but just labeled as an underwing.

The plates, as one reviewer before me noted, are disorganized, and scale does not seem to be adhered to.

I will have to use this book. But please can't we get away from this insane and shallow listing and get out some books that really contribute to the body of ornithological knowledge?