Birds of Southern South America and Antarctica. |  | Authors: Martin R. de la Pena, Maurice Rumboll
Creators: Gustavo Carrizo, Aldo A. Chiappe, Jorge R. Mata
Publisher: Princeton University Press
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $18.78
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Rating:  20 reviews
Sales Rank: 119090
Media: Paperback
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 4.8 x 0.8
ISBN: 0691090351
Dewey Decimal Number: 598.098
EAN: 9780691090351
ASIN: 0691090351
Publication Date: 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
South America, though home to about one-third of the world's bird species and twice as many endemic families of birds as any other continent, has the world's sparsest population of birdwatchers. Birds of Southern South America and Antarctica illustrates and describes all the known species--more than 1,000 of them--in a vast swath of this underexplored birder's paradise, from Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, southern Brazil, and Uruguay to parts of Antarctica. Just some of the birds it covers are teals, tinamous, chachalacas, conebills, cuckoos, macaws, parakeets, parrots, penguins, nightjars, hummingbirds, ovenbirds, tyrants, and tanagers. The habitats range from torrid rainforests and cloudforests to grasslands, the world's driest desert, second highest mountain range, and ice caps. The 97 color plates depict each species' male in breeding plumage, with the female and young often shown as well. On the facing page are concise textual descriptions of each species, highlighting not only salient physical features and behavioral patterns but the calls or songs of each. Casual birders and ornithologists contemplating a journey to the region, or simply interested in a one-volume overview of its bird life, will not want to miss this book.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 20
 Great field guide for Argentina and neighboring countries. October 1, 2009
Renee Polizotto
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This field guide was an excellent addition to our trip to Argentina (Buenos Aires and Iguazu Falls National Park). It is easy to transport in a backpack (small and not too heavy) and the color plates make it relatively easy to identify the birds we saw. In addition, the geographic plates were useful so we could determine if the birds were usually found in the regions we visited. Furthermore, the names were given in both English and Spanish which made communicating with the local guides much easier. I highly recommend this field guide to anyone traveling in southern South America.
 Not too bad considering May 5, 2009
S. M. Williams (South Florida)
There is no bird guide specific to Paraguay which is where I'm going. This guide is not up to Sibley or Peterson standards but is better than nothing. There are maps for each species,color pictures and a brief description of the bird. I am going through the book and marking species I expect to see to make it easier to use in the field.
 Excellent images April 4, 2009
G. Santos
It has high quality images of birds. It only have family classification, for biolohist it could have the order classification. It is a small book which is good to carry.
Fills a vital need February 11, 2009
Gary Clark (Spring Creek, NV, United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
We travelled down the coast of South America and on to the Antarctic Peninsula, then back up the South Atlantic via the Falkland Islands to debark the cruise ship at Buenos Aires. We then spent a month birding Argentina. We practically wore this book out, as it is the only one with such breadth as to cover most of that journey; otherwise we'd have needed a library weighing tens of kilos and costing hundreds of dollars. The book is laid out well, and although we had an initial objection to the range maps being in a separate section, this feature turned out to be quite useful, since we could quickly rule out related species due to range by quick view of a single page.
The illustrations are not of the quality one associates with a book from Sibley, Peterson, or Ridgely, but in most cases they were adequate for ID. I'd recommend this book to anyone visiting multiple countries in South America, especially if you are lucky enough to be able to cross to Antarctica.
The book is somewhat out of date as to naming and Taxonomy, but that is to be expected from the date of publishing. I'd buy a more recent edition in a minute.
Could Stand Much Improvement January 24, 2009
Craig S. Harrison (Santa Rosa, CA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I purchased this book for my first trip to Iguazu Falls where I do not know the birds very well. Its advantages are that it is portable and probably covers most species in this area. Its problems are legion. The authors randomly number the illustrations on each plate. For example, Plate 59 (woodcreepers) contains 3 rows of illustrations, and the opposite page contains the names and descriptions. The first row is numbered 6, 7 and 4. The second row contains 5, 1, 10, 9 and 8. The third row contains 2, 11, 12 and 3. When you are birding in a new area and have mere glimpses of species you are trying to identify, this becomes infuriating. I can accept that the images on the plates had to be arranged in a particular order. But why they couldn't they have numbered the birds in consecutive order?
I have used dozens of field guides for decades, and this is the first that was so poorly constructed that it fell apart. It got damp during a rainfall (Iguazu is a sub-tropical rain forest) on my first day in the field. The front and back cover slipped off entirely from the rest of the book. Princeton should be ashamed of producing such a shoddy piece of merchandise.
Finally, I am not confident the illustrations are accurate. For example, I had several excellent looks at what turned out to be a yellow-fronted woodpecker. The most striking feature is a huge white patch down the center of its back, similar to what you would see in a hairy or downy woodpecker in North America. I searched the woodpecker plates in vain for this character, and those that have it were not the species I saw. After several additional viewings I identified the species. Yet the illustration on plate 56 does not depict this feature (the text mentions this character). Had I seen the bird but once, a common situation in tropical birding, I would never have been able to identify it.
This may be "the best" you can do for this area now, but once a better book is produced this one will fall into the ash heap of history.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 20
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