[Kenbell]

Has anyone got the new field guide for the Non-Passerines of South America by F. Erize? I'm tempted to buy it!

Cheers,
Ken

[mmdnje]

HI Kenbell. I ordered so I should be able to tell you in ~2 weeks. Pretty much every country has their own guide wich is great. Jose

[Swissboy]

Originally Posted by mmdnje

HI Kenbell. I ordered so I should be able to tell you in ~2 weeks. Pretty much every country has their own guide wich is great. Jose

I'm afraid you are a bit too optimistic. Depending on the source, I found a publication date of either end of June or October. But let us know if you really get it earlier, I am anxiously awaiting all those SA field guides that have been announced, some for years, or almost decades (it would seem). Yet, if the wait results in better books,that's fine as well. I'm still very disappointed with the Peru FG.

[Fritz73]

I was lucky to see a few minutes the spanish version and the first impression was very good. Only a few plates looked too crowded. Maps are small for a big continent like South America.

[Steve Lister]

To be honest I cant see much point in a book lke this. Individual countries or at least regions in such a bird-rich continent deserve their own field-guides and a continental one can only be somewhat superficial.

Having said that it looks OK - big stacks of it at the Birdfair.

Steve

[cuckooroller]

I have been waiting to see "The Birds of Northern South America" by Restall et al, but I see that that has been pushed back to December now.

[Fritz73]

Originally Posted by Steve Lister

To be honest I cant see much point in a book lke this. Individual countries or at least regions in such a bird-rich continent deserve their own field-guides and a continental one can only be somewhat superficial.

Having said that it looks OK - big stacks of it at the Birdfair.

Steve

I think you're right, but in cases like Brazil, with it's poor De Souza Field Guide, you could add a good companion book for the non passerines.

[zoltannemeth]

The book "Birds of South America: Non-passerines" is out now I think. I e-maild the Collins publisher and they told me its available from sep 4th.
heres an amazon.co.uk link
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Birds-South-...933421?ie=UTF8

[Rasmus Boegh]

Had the chance of paging through one yesterday and here are my toughts, based on that relatively brief tour through it (this shouldn't be considered a comprehensive review).

It starts with an intro on each family, each between 1/3 and 1 page. I only skimmed through a few very briefly and they seemed to mainly consist of info on behavior (which only is given to a very limited extend in the accounts for the individual species).

The main section follow the format of the other Collins guides I am familiar with, i.e. illustrations on one page, text on the opposite page. However, contrary to the other Collins guides I am familiar with, the range-maps are also placed on the page with the text (rather than in the back of the book). The maps are quite tiny, but generally do give a fairly good idea about the distributions of each species. Still, there are a number of places where they aren't up-to-date, e.g. it appears the Grey-legged Tinamou only is shown on the Colombian/Brazil border (there are also populations in S. Venezuela and, as discovered a few years ago, in NE Peru) and the Long-tailed Woodnymph has been given a far too large range (the whole confusion is caused by the two old specimens which mistakenly are labeled Pará, leading to authors just connecting its actual range - Pernambuco, Alagoas, Sergipe & perhaps NE Bahia - with the mistaken Pará. Even HBW made this mistake).

This leads to the text: Each double-page (text with illustrations on the opposite page) treat 4-12 species, with average being around 8 species per double-page. Generally, the text appeared good, but there were problems, some of which were fairly serious in my opinion: First, the taxonomy is out-of-date. Even species where the splits became generally accepted 5-10 years ago often don't get their own entry, but are mentioned briefly under the species they are allied to (Kawall's Amazon is mentioned under Mealy A, Long-tufted & Hoy's/Montane Screech-owl under Black-capped SC, Andean/Mountain Potoo under White-winged P, Chaco Nothura under Spotted N, etc.). As for newly described species it seems 2002/3 was the cut, as the Scarlet-banded Barbet (described in 2000) and the Orange-headed/Bald Parrot (described in 2002) are included, but neither the Cryptic Forest-falcon (described in late 2002) nor the Sulfur-breasted Parakeet (described ~half a year ago) are included. In most species that are variable several races are described and illustrated, but I do find it a bit annoying that they only mention/show how these races look - never where the races are found in relation to each other. It would have been nice if the text had mentioned that e.g. the race of the Yellow-crowned Parrot with extensive yellow to the head only is found on Ilha do Maranhão, meaning that confusion with the superficially similar Yellow-shouldered Amazon is unlikely. Another example is the Bicoloured Hawk where it would have been nice if they had mentioned that the races with white underwing coverts are found in the northern part of its range, while the S & C races are the ones with rufous underwing coverts.

A potentially bigger problem are a few cases where distinctive races haven't been mentioned at all. E.g. the uppertail is described/shown as green in the Maroon-bellied Parakeet (that's true for the southern ssp. chiripepe, but northern nominate has a large part of the uppertail red, thus making confusion more likely with other superficially similar Pyrrhura's with largely red uppertail), the underwing is described/shown as being carmine in the Pearly Parakeet (true for two of the races, but ssp. anerythra completely lacks red in the wing), the Broad-billed Motmot is described as having a "tail... with racquets", whereas the Rufous Motmot (with which it commonly is confused) "seldom has racquets" (actually both have racquets W. of the Andes, in the W. Amazon both lack racquets and in the E. Amazon Rufous usually has racquets, whereas Broad-billed usually lacks racquets) and the variation in the presence/absence of barring to the undertail of the commonly confused Violaceous & White-tailed Trogon is not mentioned at all.

The bulk of each species' text consists of info on the plumage(s). The info is generally ok, but not very "field guide"-like. In most cases it did seem they mentioned the features needed for getting the ID, but only infrequently did I find a place where it was mentioned in a typical "field guide" manner. Rather, you have to do this yourself. An example could be if you saw a Slate-backed Forest-falcon. You page through the raptor section and find the Grey-bellied Hawk which looks quite like the bird you saw. As it is placed on the same page as the Bicoloured Hawk, you rapidly read the text for both and compare them to see where they differ (and thus how to separate them), but "your" bird is still most like the Grey-bellied Hawk. Then - somehow - you get the idea to check the Slaty-backed Forest-falcon 8 pages away, finally getting the right ID (hopefully!) when you have deciphered which features are useful for separating this and the Grey-bellied Hawk. It would have been a whole lot easier if it was stated directly that they easily were confused (thus excluding the very real possibility that a person who thought he had a match on the Grey-bellied hawk missed the Slaty-backed Forest-falcon several pages away) and how to separate them, e.g. "Grey-bellied Hawk is easily confused with Slaty-backed Ff, but they can be separated by amount of bare skin in the face, extend of grey on cheeks, tail, etc, etc". One of the few places where such direct features actually were mentioned was in the female Violet-capped versus the female Fork-tailed Woodnymph... the problem is that the feature they mention (crown-colour) is highly questionable from my experiance with these species.

As far as I could see, the habitat descriptions were fairly accurate (a few peculiarities, but they were generally minor), though the general lack of info on altitude is problematic - at least in the Andean species. Commonly, words like "montane" are used in front of a habitat, but anyone who've visited the Andean region will know how vague that is. There is a massive variation in the avifauna found in "montane forest" at 1500 m. and "montane forest" at 3000 m. Likewise, info on a species' status (common/uncommon/rare) would have been nice. Indeed, the only places where I found this were the White-collared Kite (correctly called "Very rare and endangered") and the Grey-headed Kite (called "rare"? That may be the case in some localities, but in most of its South American range it is uncommon). Descriptions of voices are mentioned in many of the species, but generally only very briefly. Also, there are quite a few species where no voice is described, perhaps most problematic in several species of nightjars. One could think this was because they were unknown, but that isn't the case - the voices of all South American Nightjars are known and descriptions (in most case also recordings) have been published. The only exception is (obviously) the Cayenne Nightjar.

The illustrations are generally good, but I did notice a few strange things, e.g. the illustration of a race of the Golden-olive Woodpecker with barred throat and no red malar. True, there is a race with a barred throat and there's also a race where the male lacks the malar, but it's not the same race! Other pecularity I noticed were a Lita Woodpecker with a solidly black throat, a female Red-billed Currasow with faint barring (a la juv.) on the wings, a Great Black-hawk with some rather peculiar facial skin, a female White-chinned Sapphire which looks more like a kubtcheki Versicolored Emerald and a red-eyed barred race of the Crane Hawk (commonly shown mistakenly, but barred races have whitish eyes).

Now, who would want to own this book - which I pretty much slaughtered earlier? Well, let me first start by saying that I have found mistakes (ranging from minor to significant) in every single field guide to a South America region/country I have seen. I am pretty tough in my judgement and most of the mistakes I noticed in this book would likely go completely unnoticed by most birders who visit South America. Also, while there are the peculiar illustrations I mentioned earlier, most are good - indeed, some of them are superior to anything I've seen before for those particular species. It was nice to finally see a book which includes the correct info + illustration of the leg colour of the Spotted & White-bellied Nothura (this is shown mistakenly in both HBW and the Ratites & Tinamou guide). Likewise, the illustrations of the Gorgeted Wood-quail and several of the Nightjars are far better than anything I have seen in earlier publications. There are also illustrations of flying individuals and juveniles/immatures in most species where it is useful. So no, overall it just doesn't compare to the Chilean guide by Jaramillo et al, the Ecuadorian guide by Ridgely & Greenfield, the Venezuelan guide by Hilty, the guide to the High Andes by Krabbe & Fjeldsaa or the (soon to be published) guide to northern South America by Restall et al. However, this still leaves a pretty massive part of South America, notably Brazil & (non-Andean) Bolivia, uncovered. The text & illustrations are far superior to that for the non-Passerines in any of the available Brazilian guides and Bolivia doesn't have a guide at all. It is also superior (at least in terms of illustrations) to the treatment of non-Passerines in the two available Argentinian guides, but most of the non-Passerines in that country are relatively straight forward to ID even with the limited (more-or-less accurate) info in the Argentinian field guides (notable exceptions being waders & sea-birds, but both are well treated in various books that specifically deal with these families).

So, in the end; who would I recommend getting this book? Well, if you're going to Brazil (esp. east, south or central) or Bolivia (excluding the Andean regions which are better covered by Krabbe & Fjeldsaa's "Birds of the High Andes") this new guide is - without any doubts - your best option for non-Passerines. And yes, this book could actually fit in a large pocket, which Birds of Ecuador, Birds of Venezuela, Birds of Northern South America or Birds of the High Andes certainly couldn't.

[Swissboy]

Originally Posted by Rasmus Boegh

Had the chance of paging through one yesterday and here are my toughts, based on that relatively brief tour through it (this shouldn't be considered a comprehensive review).

WOW, thank you so much Rasmus for sharing this info. One wonders how a comprehensive review would look like!
Being interested in bird guides, I'll certainly get this book, but I now know where to add some corrections (just in case). In fact I had already ordered it in advance. It'll be the Princeton UP version, but judging from previous experience, I assume that it will be the same except for the cover.

[sclateria]

Originally Posted by cuckooroller

I have been waiting to see "The Birds of Northern South America" by Restall et al, but I see that that has been pushed back to December now.

I'm also eagerly awaiting this guide. I was quite happy to come home, open the new NBC magazine and finally see a couple of the forthcoming plates. I look forward to the finished product.

[Swissboy]

Originally Posted by sclateria

I'm also eagerly awaiting this guide. I was quite happy to come home, open the new NBC magazine and finally see a couple of the forthcoming plates. I look forward to the finished product.

Are these online, someplace, by any chance?

[swamp_rattler]

The plates in this book far exceeded my expectations. This is not like the african van perlo illustrated guides. Heck...several of the plates are better than the Venezuelan and Ecuador guides!
Highly recommended!

[jimbob]

Does anyone know when the guide to passerines will be released?
Cheers, Jim.