Birds of Southern Africa (Princeton Illustrated Checklists)

My own fault, really. There are so very many birds to cover in Southern Africa, and the publisher tried to put together a volume that has all the necessary information in an easy-to-carry bundle. The font size is so small that it is difficult to read and there are so many illustrations on a page that the birds are difficult to distinguish. Fortunately, a friend loaned me her Newman's guide which is a good deal fatter (and heavier), but easier to read.

Love the birds in Southern Africa. Wish I could identify by sound but definitely helped identify using pictures.

Got here especially quickly. Very nice!

This bird guide was difficult to use. Should not be sold as there are newer guides.

Considering how many tourists are attracted to the southern African region by its bird-rich Okavango Delta, Namibian endemics or larks of Karoo, this new aid in bird identification is a most welcome sight. Unlike its South African namesakes (namely Newman's and SASOL), this new edition has one major advantage: it's a pocket-sized book that successfully avoids the bulkiness of its predecessors. Not only the text, illustrations and maps of distribution are of decent quality, but the size of volume is also of importance in the eyes of an average tourist - most likely, his or her bags are already overfilled.The text is brief, covering Southern Africa in the wider sense. This volume includes not only South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia - but also Angola, Zambia and Malawi. That means there was little space left to explain the preferred habitat of each of the 1,200 or so species covered, but text sharply focuses on major identification marks of our birds: the feather colours, the body shape, the bill length or whatever else is important for a particular bird.The most important part of every bird identification guide, however, is its illustrations. The bird plates show in full colour every single species, plus a difference between the sexes, the adults and the young, the breeding and non-breeding birds, etc. Some plates with more than ten, even closer to twenty species tend to be overcrowded. The colours tend to be somewhat too bright, too strong - probably a printing error - but it's not that much of a problem as the opposite (faded colours) would be. Generally, despite minor complaints the illustrations are fine enough for accurate identification.The distribution maps are the least precise part of every guide, usually showing where birders were - that is, showing the current level of knowledge and not the real distribution. Despite this, the maps in van Perlo's are pretty accurate (except, perhaps, the bird distributions in Angola) which is not a surprise since the southern African region is the most researched part of the continent. With the number of species per plate, it was not possible to place the distribution maps on the opposite page, as usual in a majority of similar volumes, so the maps are at the end of a book. It is not practical to waste your observation time turning too many pages to check if the suspected bird lives in particular area, but there is no alternative. This is, perhaps, van Perlo's book's greatest weakness.If you either briefly visit the southern African region, or live there and want to have a second, brief and concise field guide, look no further: Ber van Perlo fulfilled your need.

This book was not at all what I expected. It was impossible, I now know, to determine the quality of this book from the information available on the web site. The pictures are much smaller than I imagined. There are so many on one page that the quality is substandard. I am very disappointed in this book. I will review books in bookstores so I can see what I am buying before ordering another book such as this one online.

Love the compact size, illustrations and completeness.

Very comprehensive book. Used on a recent safari to South Africa and able to identify all the over one hundred birds we saw.Iden

concise book, with coloured drawings of many of the birds and full written descriptions for reference and maps of distribution

Pour illustrer 1200 espèces dans un volume plus petit que le Princeton Guides/Birds, il faut des illustrations petites et des pages un peu encombrées.Je le trouve très bien pour quelqu'un qui connait déjà les oiseaux de la région. Sinon, il faut soit le remplacer par/ ou l'accompagner en priorité du Princeton Field Guides Birds of Southern Africa (Fourth Edition), plus volumineux, mais aux illustrations plus grandes et plus belles, avec 950 espèces illustrées.

Das Buch ist sehr gut, auch wenn die Farben manchmal nicht ganz so dargestellt sind, wie sie sich im Feld darstellen. Die Verbreitungskarten sind nicht im Bestimmungsteil, was einem einiges Blättern abverlangt. Ansonsten habe ich es intensiv benutzt. Hilfreich.

Was exactly what I expected it to be. but arrived a week after last date expected.