Young adult books offering Sudan coverage? (1 Viewer)

Hello BirdForum community,

What's your experience of books that are most likely to come in handy in this situation?

A "tween-aged" family member is living in Khartoum (Sudan) who has been a sponge for wildlife behavior. I hope a few books will help nurture that interest.

1. Any experience with books that might avoid technical jargon and help both with bird ID and behavior in Sudan? -- with behavior important here for deeper education. As I'm a Yank, I'm not familiar with migratory patterns for those longitudes, and have been wary of titles claiming to have coverage of either "Europe, the Middle East and North Africa" or "East Africa."

2. There have been a few family R&R trips to both southern and eastern Africa. Is there a compact bird ID book that is good for the entire continent?

3. As a side note, it would be great to hear your experiences too with other books that would give this young adult a rich picture of the entire tree of life on the African continent -- animals, of course, and perhaps even vegetation.

Thanks so much.

Incidentally, I've found this booklist for Sudan (along with a 21-page checklist!), but some help narrowing the offerings down would be a great assistance.

http://www.africanbirdclub.org/countries/Sudan/books.html

I am very far from an expert on this area, but a few ideas:

The Safari Companion: A Guide to Watching African Mammals according to the blurb contains a bit on behavior

Kingdon Field Guide to African Mammals This is the larger, more inclusive book that has background information; there also is a pocket guide which is more what you think of as field guide (I have this), and the same author has a fair number of books with titles similar to "atlas of evolution ...".

Birds of Africa South of the Sahara: Second Edition I have a field guide to birds of Southern Africa by the same author and that looks to be good. This is obviously covering a larger area and is as such more difficult.

A less ambitious volume is http://www.amazon.com/Wildlife-East...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1308272792&sr=1-1

Niels

Additional titles for east africa bird books

A few other decent bird books for the region of eastern Africa include four I've listed below. Both of the first two books have top quality illustrations and should cover nearly ever bird seen in southern Sudan. If picking only one, I'd recommend the first (Horn of Africa). Although the other two books show only a subset of the birds in the region, they do have nice color photographs and are of a compact size.

You can look at sample pages for each of these books on a page I dedicated to birds books of eastern Africa. These are found towards the bottom of the page in the "Regional" section. The link is...HERE.

All four of the below books are available on Amazon. However! Beware of the inflated prices that are artificially raised by software programs. The two small photo guides really should sell for no more than US$15-20.

Birds of the Horn of Africa by Redman/Stevenson/Fanshawe (2009)

Field Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Stevenson/Fanshawe (2002)

A Photographic Guide to Birds of Prey of Southern, Central and East Africa by Allan (1996)

Common Birds of East Africa by Withers/Hosking (1996)

Jack

Niels and Jack,

Jack - I had a look at your site and am simply agog at it all!

I looked carefully at the range maps you've scanned, and sadly could find next to none that directly depict Sudan. E Africa cuts off at Eritrea, and North Africa cuts off at the southern Egyptian border in every book that you've scanned, save one.

I also plugged the two endemics known for Sudan (Cinnamon Weaver and Red Sea Cliff Swallow) into Google Book Search and came up with basically a mention of them in the Redman/Stevenson/Fanshawe "Horn of Africa" tome, but calling them "extremely rare." I guess that doesn't bode especially well for direct coverage of Sudan.

On the other hand, your scan of the "Birds South of the Sahara" book (that Niels cited) DOES have a Sudan range map. Text is less intriguing than the writing in the 1955 birds-of-Sudan book, but even that book doesn't mention either the Cinnamon Weaver or Red Sea Cliff Swallow (at least according to Google Book Search). In the end, BSotS may be the best choice for this situation.

Jack, any further thoughts?

Some more bits on Sudan

The only book to assuredly cover all of Sudan's birds plus, to show a range map of the country, is the book Niels noted, "Birds of Africa South of the Sahara". The only one I know of dedicated to just Sudan is the book you mentioned earlier, by Cave and McDonald. Written in 1955, it has some nice color plates but is rather limited for visual identification since it shows ony 50% of the birds. The text is admirable, though.

Also, this book is hard to find and typically expensive when you do locate a copy. The cheapest I've seen is $50 which is now available on Amazon. Typically, the book ranges between $75 and $200.

Lastly, you may find a blogger's site to be useful. It is dedicated to birds of Sudan. The link below shows a post on relevant books for the country. The latest posting in June is actually about the endemic Red Sea Swallow you've noted.

http://birdingsudan.blogspot.com/2010/09/bird-books-to-use-in-sudan.html

Jack

Cheers, Jack, for pointing this out!.

Thanks for pointing out my blog Jack. The books mentioned above are the best for Sudan. Of course it depends a lot where you are based. The best for Khartoum (where AKAs niece is based - where she attends the school where I teach) is definately The Birds of the Horn of Africa. The east Africa guides are best for the south of the country and North African or Middle East guides are best for the northern regions. No guide covers everything.

Tom

The distribution atlas is a very useful compliment to one of the field guides mentioned above, because it gives you a reasonable idea of where each species is found. This means you can use extralimital guides for the identification, and the maps in the atlas to narrow down which species might be present. However, it would depend a lot on the interest level and age of the person in question. Cross-referencing in this way might be fun for a teenager with a real interest in birds, but would be too complicated for a beginner or pre-teen. The atlas has maps for most of the 938 species discussed, but not for those recorded at only two locations. The notes are mainly limited to habitat and status codes.

Tom