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Birds of East Asia, Mark Brazil (1 Viewer)

Microtus said:
I'm not sure why you would need Brazil's book for Kazakhstan. If I were going there, I would take the McKinnon/Phillips China guide, and the Collins guide. China borders Kazakhstan, whereas the area of coverage for Brazil's book is much further away. Those two books should contain everything you'll see in that country.
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a [very helpful] bird guide who works in Kazakhstan recommended it to me on the "info wanted" forum.

I think I will end up taking a patchwork of books anyway - it will help build my personal library and give me more studying to do on a rainy day :t:

thanks for the china book suggestion, btw
 
No problem. I in turn will keep the bird guide's suggestion about Brazil's book in mind should I ever visit Kazakhstan ...
|=)|
 
For Xinjiang, which borders Kazahstan I brought the black Collins, The Field Guide to the Birds of the Middle East (Porter et al.) and the Macmillan Guide to European & Middle Eastern Birds (a great little book). One of the Indian Guides might also help, but Mackinnon . . . long experience suggests otherwise . . . unless you need ballast.

Cheers
Mike
 
Microtus said:
What is wrong with MacKinnon? I haven't seen any reviews of it.
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I'm not sure there's much "wrong" with McKinnon; its problem is that we tend to measure fieldguides against Collins and Sibley and a few other top class products. McKinnon falls a bit short of these with some of the plates very crowded and the maps are not that great (mind you, I think the latter is also a problem with Brazil). On a personal preference note I prefer to have the illustrations opposite the text and map; McKinnon places all plates together at the front with text at the back.

DiP
 
Thanks! I own the book but am not going to China any time soon and have never been to Asia. It looks like I may have bought a big brick from comments on this page and the one in Amazon. I'm wondering if buying the other Mackinnon field guide (to Borneo is it?) may not be a good idea.
 
In addition to the issues mentioned above the book is full of errors - wrong races illustrated, references to wrong species cited in the text, a mixed bag of illustrations. . .

One reviewer commented it was so poor that one should blame the publisher rather than the authors beause of the fundamental nature of the errors.

I have been birding in China for the last 20 years and never taken it with me because of its poor quality. I always use a selection of guides from neighbouring countries.

To be fair it is also the most important guide of this decade as this is the first guide of even this very average quality to illustrate every species in China - and will be the first first book this first generation of Chinese birders use. It may not stand p to even the first Peterson in terms of quality, but in terms of significance its impact will be huge.
 
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MKinHK said:
Latest Hong Kong: Elisa's Flycatcher (430)
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Hello Mike,

Sorry to wander off-topic, but on which ground do you split Ficedula (narcissina) elisae ?

Is it based on Zhang & al. 2006 ?

Zhang, Y.-Y., Wang, N., Zhang, J. & Zheng G. M. 2006
Acoustic difference of narcissus flycatcher complex
Acta zoologica sinica 52(4): 648-654.

... or something else ?
 
Hi Daniel

Good to hear from you!

As a birder of the old school I would split it on the striking morphological differences in both sexes, but also on distribution, because it is recognized by HKBWS in the Avifauna of HK, and Brazil 2008 also recognizes it in the Birds of East Asia - more than enough for me!

And if the paper you cite notes differences in call/song, then so much the better.

As for the lumpers - its not as if I'll ever see the mitochondrial DNA of any bird anyway . . .

and finally . . . since I'm just a humble birder whose opinion counts for precisely zero in taxonomic circles, I have the wonderful freedom to think exactly as I please!!

Cheers
Mike
 
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