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Birds of Central Asia (1 Viewer)

Richard Klim

Richard Klim

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A forthcoming title that I've only just noticed:

  • Ayé, Schweizer & Roth. Field Guide to the Birds of Central Asia. c400pp. A&C Black.
    18 Aug 2011, £29.99, according to WildSounds.
Should fill an important gap in coverage (especially for distribution maps), but I fear that the publication date might (as so often) be rather optimistic...

Richard
 
It'll also be interesting to see how they deal with the taxonomy of certain groups (Lesser Whitethroats, Short-toed Larks, Grey Shrikes, there must be others) I look forward to seeing it.

James
 
Richard Klim said:
A forthcoming title that I've only just noticed:

  • Ayé, Schweizer & Roth. Field Guide to the Birds of Central Asia. c400pp. A&C Black.
    18 Aug 2011, £29.99, according to WildSounds.
Should fill an important gap in coverage (especially for distribution maps), but I fear that the publication date might (as so often) be rather optimistic...

Richard
Click to expand...

Dunno Rich - most of the illustrations are being taken from 'East Asia' and I've been doing some of the 'missing' birds for the new area so it shouldn't be that long in reality. Some thrushes here (#366) :

http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=106503&page=15
 
birdboybowley said:
Dunno Rich - most of the illustrations are being taken from 'East Asia' and I've been doing some of the 'missing' birds for the new area so it shouldn't be that long in reality. Some thrushes here (#366) :
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=106503&page=15
Click to expand...
Nice work, Ads. Glad to hear the book's for real, even if much of the content is inevitably recycled material from the Helm stable. [I guess there's a similar approach to the artwork for the forthcoming Mongolia guide.]

Richard
 
Richard Klim said:
......inevitably recycled material from the Helm stable. [I guess there's a similar approach to the artwork for the forthcoming Mongolia guide.]

Richard
Click to expand...

I much prefer this approach as long as the reused illustrations are top notch. It helps to get out those missing books faster. And eventually, we should get more complete sets of illustrations per species, as a publisher can then more easily afford to have flight pictures etc painted as well. Not that I expect all of this in a first edition. They want to leave room for improvement so that we all get later editions again. But just as an example, I'm sure we would not now have the fine new FG to the birds of Panama if all the illustrations would have had to be done from scratch.
 
i'm sure the practise of sharing artwork is a good thing insofar as it speeds the publication of much-desired fieldguides however one advantage of using new artwork is it offers a fresh interpretation of the appearance of a particular species which really helps when you're trying to learn exotic avifaunas.

for example recently learning chilean birds from the jaramillo book, the fact i already had different illustrations of many species in the peru field guide was very useful.

on the other hand i was really disappointed to see that the illustrations from my new birds of borneo FG are almost all culled from the Robson SE Asia guide, which i already have. Having two illustrations by different artists for the various cryptic babblers, bulbuls and flycatchers would have been a great help in the learning process.

ah well....
 
James Lowther said:
....one advantage of using new artwork is it offers a fresh interpretation of the appearance of a particular species which really helps when you're trying to learn exotic avifaunas.

...........
Click to expand...

I agree, a look at a particular species by different artists can be most illuminating and helpful. I also hate to have the same illustrations too often, particularly when I think they are not optimal. I think Struik of South Africa was the first publisher where I noticed this recycling. And it was because I was not happy with the proportions of some species or groups of species. Many other illustrations, however, were excellent, and I liked the fact that they had been reused.
 
another problem i've noticed with using the same artwork in different guides is you possibly run the risk of having closely related species being done by different artists, which can make picking up the differences quite hard.

in the borneo guide this happens where they've retained the artwork from birds of SE Asia for widely distributed species but commissioned a new artist to do bornean endemics...
 
It's slightly ironic that while field guides for important uncovered areas are forced to borrow artwork from existing guides to other regions, HarperCollins seems to be set on a mission to duplicate coverage of already well-served areas. I'm particularly surprised by its recent commissioning of an illustrated checklist-style guide to the West Indies by Norman Arlott, which (from reviews) seems to add little (if anything) to Raffaele et al [and follows the ambitious 2-volume field guide to the Palearctic - of questionable utility: good luck to American birders trying to identify their first Phylloscs & Acros!]; but most surprisingly (for publication this spring) a new field guide to North America - what can Collins/Arlott possibly hope to contribute to this already overcrowded market?

Richard
 
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Best Field Guide for Central Asia?

Have been trying to find a field guide for Mongolia and see that there are none available and it looks like the new one will not be published for some time.
Any recommendations?
 
There is no single guide for Mongolia. Birds of East Asia covers a large portion of the birds, but mainly the eastern ones. The Collins guide covers a lot, but mainly the western ones. If you are mainly interested in the local specialties you will probably find Birds of China by MacKinnon and Phillips to be the best. It is nowhere near the quality of the other two guides but there is better species coverage and the range maps give you some (and I do mean only some) indication of what might be around. I lived In Mongolia until recently and considered this my main guide. If you are familiar with European birds you may want the China guide and the East Asia guide as your main sources.

Tom
 
stonechat1 said:
Not at the moment ;-)
http://www.nhbs.com/birds_of_mongolia_tefno_152805.html
Click to expand...
However, the fact that the link goes to a book authored by Axel Braunlich when the main author is now Gombobaatar Sundev should tell you their definition of "forthcoming".
Gombo has already written a few books on wildlife in Mongolia and one is 'A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Mongolia - volume 1'. I don't know whether volume 2 will be the field guide or something else. It only covers 160 species and is mainly aimed at beginners, but gives detailed range maps for each species.

Tom
 
tomjenner said:
However, the fact that the link goes to a book authored by Axel Braunlich when the main author is now Gombobaatar Sundev should tell you their definition of "forthcoming".
Gombo has already written a few books on wildlife in Mongolia and one is 'A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Mongolia - volume 1'. I don't know whether volume 2 will be the field guide or something else. It only covers 160 species and is mainly aimed at beginners, but gives detailed range maps for each species.

Tom
Click to expand...

Do you know where I could acquire a copy of the 'A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Mongolia'?
 
Richard Klim said:
It's slightly ironic that while field guides for important uncovered areas are forced to borrow artwork from existing guides to other regions, HarperCollins seems to be set on a mission to duplicate coverage of already well-served areas. I'm particularly surprised by its recent commissioning of an illustrated checklist-style guide to the West Indies by Norman Arlott, which (from reviews) seems to add little (if anything) to Raffaele et al [and follows the ambitious 2-volume field guide to the Palearctic - of questionable utility: good luck to American birders trying to identify their first Phylloscs & Acros!]; but most surprisingly (for publication this spring) a new field guide to North America - what can Collins/Arlott possibly hope to contribute to this already overcrowded market?
Click to expand...
There's a brief review by Rick Wright on the ABA Blog of Arlott's North American guide. What are HarperCollins/Princeton hoping to achieve with these unnecessary lower-quality field guides that add nothing to existing literature...?
 
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Hat's off to Rick Wright for telling things how they are. A refreshing change from the often mealy-mouthed reviews I've read of some of Arlott's other books, most especially the West Indies guide. Are most reviewers too shy to say what they really think, hamstrung by getting a free book and therefore unable to tell the truth, or just plain ignorant?

What's worse is that by commissioning such publications, there is potentially less in the pot for books that really deserve to have some love, care, and money lavished on them by the publisher, rather than just by their author/s. Unless Richard is wrong, and large numbers of people really do purchase such books?
 
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