Best bird guides by region...Central and South America (1 Viewer)

[Mike Crawley]

I have a trip to Brazil planned for early September.
Starting at Manaus and then on a river boat along the Rio Negro.

Anyone with a recommendation for a good field guide ?

I'm sure the company I have booked with can provide a recommendation but thought I would ask the cognoscenti on this thread

 

[pbjosh]

I have a trip to Brazil planned for early September.
Starting at Manaus and then on a river boat along the Rio Negro.

Anyone with a recommendation for a good field guide ?

I'm sure the company I have booked with can provide a recommendation but thought I would ask the cognoscenti on this thread

There is no great option sadly.

Van Perlo’s BR book covers the species but frankly sucks. And is getting out of date for taxonomy slowly but surely.

There are a couple obscure books in portuguese that cover the species more or less but aren’t really very recommendable even if you get ahold of them. (Old and not great art either).

Personally I would get the appropriate Merlin pack and take the new Colombia guide which has good N of the Amazon coverage. The Venezuela guides (both the old and the new) cover those Amazonian species too but the art is much better in the new CO book than the new VE book. The Peru book covers a fair number of the species you’re likely to see as well but the CO book will be a hair better.

 

[Mike Crawley]

Thanks for your quick reply pbjosh

 

[pbjosh]

Thanks for your quick reply pbjosh

No worries… it really depends on how much land based birding you are doing as well. If you bird E of the Negro / N of the Amazon, particularly near to Manaus, the CO/VE books will be missing more species.

It is worse S of the Amazon and E of the Madeira.

Hopefully someday BR will get a decent guidebook!

 

[njlarsen]

What's the best USA field guide these days please? I think my ancient Nat Geog one might need an upgrade for my pending trip! Thanks in advance

You could keep the book and combine with Sibley as an app, that’s how I travel to the US (if I even bring a book). A cheaper alternative is to combine it with the free Merlin app.
Niels

 

[THE_FERN]

You could keep the book and combine with Sibley as an app, that’s how I travel to the US (if I even bring a book). A cheaper alternative is to combine it with the free Merlin app.
Niels

Oh no not going paperless..?

 

[Larry Sweetland]

You could keep the book and combine with Sibley as an app, that’s how I travel to the US (if I even bring a book). A cheaper alternative is to combine it with the free Merlin app.
Niels

Nice idea, but there's something about sitting on a dirty trail and flicking through a field guide that I think I'll still enjoy doing while I can still bend my knees! 😉

 

[Butty]

Van Perlo’s BR book covers the species but frankly sucks.

Definitely it's dodgy. But, it's also extremely useful - and, unless you're already a highly-experienced S American/Brazil birder, I think you'd be daft to travel without it.

 

[Jim M.]

Definitely it's dodgy. But, it's also extremely useful - and, unless you're already a highly-experienced S American/Brazil birder, I think you'd be daft to travel without it.

Agree. It covers the whole country, but is still compact and light--an impressive feat. I'd take the Merlin bird packs and Van Perlo. Adding the Birds of Peru app might be useful if you don't mind the expense.

 

[Jim M.]

Nice idea, but there's something about sitting on a dirty trail and flicking through a field guide that I think I'll still enjoy doing while I can still bend my knees! 😉

Agree. Unless you are very familiar with the birds in the area, I think a paper guide will always help because it's more convenient and easier to access in the field.

For the eastern U.S., I'd recommend the little eastern Sibley for travel/use in the field by experienced birders such as yourself (knowing you will be traveling in the east). It has loads of info in a compact size. You could add the big sibley as an app for calls and further reference.

 

[DMW]

I think of Van Perlo Brazil as an illustrated checklist. It's value is in the comprehensive species coverage, and it's fine for easy-to-identify birds. You probably aren't going to nail down too many tyrannulets with it, though!

It is a shame WCS didn't finished their coverage of Brazil. I think a series of field guides covering each faunal region is more useful than a single brick covering the entire country.

 

[Larry Sweetland]

Agree. Unless you are very familiar with the birds in the area, I think a paper guide will always help because it's more convenient and easier to access in the field.

For the eastern U.S., I'd recommend the little eastern Sibley for travel/use in the field by experienced birders such as yourself (knowing you will be traveling in the east). It has loads of info in a compact size. You could add the big sibley as an app for calls and further reference.

Thanks Jim 👍

 

[njlarsen]

Nice idea, but there's something about sitting on a dirty trail and flicking through a field guide that I think I'll still enjoy doing while I can still bend my knees! 😉

I did not say that you could not bring your current NatGeo as well

To my mind, the full version of Sibley is too big to bring into the field except as an app.
Niels

 

[pbjosh]

Definitely it's dodgy. But, it's also extremely useful - and, unless you're already a highly-experienced S American/Brazil birder, I think you'd be daft to travel without it.

Fair enough. I have friends that still carry it. For me the range maps are so small and the taxonomy so ever further out of date that I prefer Merlin for the range maps.

I feel that if you aren’t ID‘ing mostly by voice in the Amazon you’d just need better plates than that but that’s just one dude‘s opinion of course.

If you are using the CO guide, for instance, you do then have to check ranges separately in Merlin and it helps to know which species are look alikes that replace each other across rivers.

Also I agree with another comment that having the Peru app (iPhone only) is priceless if you spend a lot of time in S America.

Mostly this all gets back to: there is no great solution for a field guide for most of Brazil. In SW Brazil (W of Madeira S of Amazon) I take the PE and BO books. In the N Amazon I would take the CO book as mentioned. In the NE I just use Merlin. In the SE and Pantanal you have good books at least. In the interior (Minas Gerais, Tocantins, etc) again just Merlin. E of the Madeira and S of the Amazon there really is nothing but Van Perlo unfortunately.

 

[pbjosh]

Also just since we are discussing it if one is planning to use eBird in the states of Pará or Amazonas beware that the filters are almost useless. Both states contain so many different biogeographic regions of the Amazon that the filters just don’t even get you close for a lot of stuff. I was recently in Pará for a few weeks and I spent all my time checking where species boundaries were between the Tapajos, Xingu, and Tocantins rivers as eBird would happily let me log almost any Amazonian species almost anywhere in the state. I remember a fair amount of the N/S of the Amazon stuff but between those rivers I can’t even come close to remembering it all.

 

[Mike Crawley]

As a non-eBird user this will not present a problem.
I did have a brief flirtation with eBird in New Zealand it was wildly inaccurate

 

[Jim M.]

As a non-eBird user this will not present a problem.
I did have a brief flirtation with eBird in New Zealand it was wildly inaccurate

I used eBird in NZ in 2018. Worked fine. It takes time for eBird to find local volunteers to put in filters. Most of the frequently birded areas are done; I'm sure they will all be done eventually.

 

[pbjosh]

Yeah I thought the filters were decent to my (perhaps less discerning) standards on my visits to NZ.

 

[Mike Crawley]

That wasn’t my experience in 2019

 

[pbjosh]

Could just be a question of expectations then. Most parts of the world won’t have per-site filters developed. In the US in some areas it is really fine grained.

But on the flip side I don’t know any electronic listing system with finer grained filters / better info about likely vs not likely birds.