A Birdwatching Guide to South-East Brazil – Juha Honkala & Seppo Niiranen | Softcover | 2010 | £28.99 | approx. $47/€34 | ISBN: 9789529271924

We have just received a copy of this excellent book from Juha Honkala as a donation for our growing library.

I have had the chance to look through it and I am mightily impressed. The book seems to be very thorough and the information and details are set out clearly and concisely. The details of the places that I am personally familiar with seem to be accurate and detailed enough to allow a visitor, unfamiliar with the area, to find the sites easily.

The site guides include clear easy to understand maps, details of how to get to the site in a highlighted box using landmarks as well as road numbers etc. A description of the habitat and trails available and a list of the most important or interesting species.The species accounts are short and concise giving size; plumage characteristics; subspecies in the region; voice; habitat; status in both the Agulhas Negras region and the south-east in general. There are many excellent photographs illustrating the field guide section. I am not a great fan of photographic field guides in truth, there is a tendency to put in substandard photos purely out of the necessity to illustrate every species. This book however has few such photos. Where no photo exists truly breathtaking artworks by Tomasz Cofta are used, the realistic quality of these images is truly stunning. An effort has been made to include different plumages where applicable and raptors in flight as well as perched, which is a really useful feature. Although I haven’t had a chance to study the maps in detail they seem to fall in line with the known distributions of the species in question although there is no indication of seasonal movements.

At the end of the book there is a section containing useful information and contacts.

Are there errors? Of course there will be in a work of this nature, but looking for them or highlighting them would do a great injustice to this magnificent work.

My congratulations to the authors and publishers.

Guest Reviewer: Rick Simpson

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