Birds of Southeast Asia (Princeton Field Guides)

Those who denigrate this guide because it lacks range maps are making too much fuss. You can't cover 1270 species with excellent illustrations AND include a readable range map of SE Asia (I mean sheesh - that's a Big Map!) for each one AND make it pocketable. As it is this is 5.75 x 8.25 x 1 inches - you need a big pocket. Just get used to reading the range as text, and familiarize yourself with the few mystical terms, such as "Tenasserim". Compared to the amount of study you ordinarily put into using any field guide, this is trivial. You learned avian topography, didn't you?I can't speak to the accuracy of the drawings because I haven't made my trip yet, but the *quality* of them is top-notch. The species descriptions are very detailed. I will edit this report after my trip.

I purchased this book to give me an easier way to determine which countries or areas of countries to visit than eBird could do. I knew it did not have maps, based on the reviews, but I figured a regional perspective would help me to figure out which locations to prioritize, or species to prioritize for that matter.I'll have to say that it was good I purchased it used for a discounted price, because it is very hard to use in the way I intended, but even worse, probably nearly impossible as a true in the field guide. There are some improvements in usability between this book and Robson's 'Birds of Thailand', in terms of locating birds on the page. Birds of Thailand is THE most confusing guide I've ever used, but that's for another review.I see this book as a pre-trip study guide rather than a field guide, and therefore some of the shortcuts they took made it much less useful. The crowded pages are hard to read in the field or at home, because you need to look at the numbers and then find the numbers in the text. I used a pencil to lightly separate the species with different plumages due to age or gender, because the pages were too crowded to separate some of the species otherwise (but not nearly as bad as Birds of Thailand!). If they had considered that a guide with this much geographical reach was probably not going to be used as much in the field as spin-off country guides, then many of the usability flaws could have been avoided. Use maps instead of abbreviations for countries. Use names on the plates instead of numbers. Separate the species more. Increase the size of the illustrations so they can actually be seen without a microscope. Point out field marks. Use concise bullets to elaborate on field marks.I think field guide authors are trying so hard to save space that they forget the function of a field guide, and that is to easily locate the correct species in the field. Each nanosecond counts, and glimpsing back and forth from illustrations with numbers and then searching for those tiny numbers in the text just doesn't cut it. Check out the guides that use maps, concise field marks noted on the illustrations, and NAMES of the species next to the species. Is this so hard? Yes it adds a few ounces or portions of ounces---and as a 68-year old not very spry woman, YES, this is worth it! Give me the ease of finding the bird I'm seeing and I'll gladly carry that extra portion of an ounce!!A regional guide should have some greater introduction to the breadth of habitats, along with regional maps that are of a scale that is readable to the under 65 year old population. Yes, I get that some fonts are too small for me these days, but really, the ONLY map in the book is a purportedly 4-color map on the end-flap that is impossible to distinguish anything but black and a bit of green, at a scale that is pretty useless.Perhaps my view of a regional guide is skewed, but I see this guide as not serving either the avid birder who needs more detail in range, habitat, and better illustration notes for pre-trip study, nor the more casual birder who finds it hard to locate what bird might be where. A larger regional guide, or just go with a country-level guide, but this one is really hard to meet either need. The more casual birder is better served with the photo-type guides that show the most common species.The good points are that looking at these droolworthy images are just wonderful! I can't wait to see some of these species, or reacquaint myself with some of the ones I've been fortunate to see already. I just hope that the field guide industry, which seems to be pumping out a tremendous number of books, begins getting that sweet spot of what the public needs more accurately.

This is a great book to have when you visit southeast Asia. The number of illustrations is dizzying. The only disappointment for me is that the book does not include the birds of Indonesia. This is an excellent field guide, not too big to carry with you. The information provided about each species is brief, but thorough, and includes written range description (no maps). The illustrations are very thorough. The book was very useful when I was in Thailand, and I'm glad to have it. I would recommend it.

I spent a week birding in Cambodia, and this was a great guide for the country. As others have mentioned, the guide does not have distribution maps, which can make it difficult to pin down whether or not a species you're seeing is where it's supposed to be. The written descriptions of ranges do a little to alleviate this, but if you're not familiar with the region, they aren't particularly helpful.The descriptions of the birds, and the colored plates, are excellent. Some of the plate pages are a little disorganized, as the pictures are matched with a number (not a name) to the corresponding species description, so it's easy to get mixed up if you're not careful. Also, it seems to me that the author would have done better to organize the plates according to a taxonomic regime, rather than by closeness of appearance or name. The passerines are essentially all lumped together at the end of the book, with only about half of the passerines organized by family or genus. While this may be aesthetically pleasing, I ended up spending a lot of time hastily ransacking the index to find a given species' page number, since it wasn't where (I thought) it should be.Overall, given the size and scope of this guide, it is very thorough and contains many of the recent splits and lumps (Cambodian Tailorbird is not listed, but this species was only officially described in 2013). It might be too big to be a "field guide," but one can easily bird the entire Southeast Asian peninsula with this one book. Just be sure to do your homework before your trip, so you know where the species you're likely to see are located in the book.

If you plan any amount of time in SE Asia and have an interest in birds, this is a definite take-along. It is well organized and has excellent illustrations. Information is somewhat spotty on confirmed ranges as much of the territory covered has a variety of political issues which has limited observation in past and still today in some areas.

Habe dieses Buch einen Ornithologen geschenkt und er war begeistert. Es sind viele Vögel beschrieben und mit guten Bildern. Nathürlich sind es nur die Vögel von Südost Asien und nicht alle. Ich empfehle es gerne für jeden weiter, der etwas über die Vögel in Asien lernen will

Illustrations were good but there were no region maps. The listed regions weren't even by country. I used this book in Vietnam & Cambodia and never could figure out where any given bird was supposed to be. At least give a big map with the region names and locations.

The field guide appeared to be quite comprehensive althought it will be several months before I will use it in the field. One disappointment was that it does not have range maps.

Just came back from a birding trip to Thailand and Robson was a great resource to help identify all the unfamiliar species I saw. Even our guide uses this book. I highly recommend Birds of Southeast Asia!