By Steve NG Howell & Fabrice Schmitt | Princeton University Press | March 2018 Paperback | 240 pages, Colour photos, 3 Colour maps | ISBN: 9780691167398 |

Birds of Chile
Birds of Chile – A Photo Guide

The Publisher’s View: This is the first modern-style photographic field guide to the birds of Chile, an increasingly popular destination with birders and naturalists. Compact and easy to carry, pack, and use, Birds of Chile is ideal for curious naturalists and experienced birders alike, providing everything anyone needs to identify the birds they see. Clear photographs and brief, facing-page species accounts highlight what to look for and how to quickly identify species. The photos include both close-ups and birds-in-habitat images to further aid real-life identification. An introduction and maps provide an overview of Chile’s geographic regions and their distinctive birdlife. Birds of Chile is also a great resource for birding in nearby countries, especially Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru.

Other Views:This is a thoughtfully constructed photographic guide. The photographs look superb and capture the species very well in their natural habitat. The writing is clear and focused, and the essay on habitat and bird distribution succinctly captures the topic, delving into enough detail to keep the reader engaged. Key features are highlighted and other useful tips are included that aid in identification.

– Peter Burke, bird-guide illustrator and tour leader with Field Guides Inc.

Succinct but amazingly informative, this guide reflects the authors’ decades of experience with the birds of Chile. The guide is incredibly well illustrated, clearly written, and a pleasure to explore. It will be a very useful tool in the field given its imagery, information, and small size.

– Alvaro Jaramillo, author of Birds of Chile

The Authors: Steve N. G. Howell is an international bird tour leader with WINGS and a research associate at the California Academy of Sciences and Point Blue Conservation Science. He is the author of many books, including Petrels, Albatrosses, and Storm-Petrels of North America (Princeton) and Molt in North American Birds (Peterson Reference Guides).Fabrice Schmitt is an international bird tour leader with WINGS and a lecturer on Ponant Antarctic cruises. He lived in Chile from 2005 to 2015, founded the online birding magazine La Chiricoca, and helped develop the eBird online birding tool for Chile and the rest of South America.

Fatbirder View: This will not be without its uses as most South American bird guides are massive and this is a pocket book. In my view it’s a bit of a mixed bag… without re-iterating my general view on photoguides this suffers from the difficulty of comparison of difficult to separate species that are posed differently in different light etc. Having said that some section of the book are very much better than others. Seabirds and raptors are very well dealt with… lots of in-flight photos giving ranges of plumage etc., and with some excellent sharp photos.On the other hand I would want to rely on this book to ID hummingbirds and many passerines as the photos vary from brilliant to poor.The text is certainly succinct… very, very compact but often surprisingly comprehensive. I guess one can have discussions about finer points after a day in the field with larger better fieldguides and etc., at hand. I would 100% want this with me on a pelagic and at a raptor watchpoint.

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