Birds of the Indian Subcontinent By Richard Grimmett, Carol Inskipp & Tim Inskipp | Christopher Helm | Softcover | 2012 | Edition: 2 | ISBN 9781408127636 | 528 Pages | 226 Colour Plates | Colour Distribution Maps | Black & White Illustrations
Overview:
This is the second edition of the authors’ groundbreaking “Birds of the Indian Subcontinent” (1998) and covers all the bird species found in India, Pakistian, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and the Maldives.
The plates face the descriptions and maps for quick at-a-glance reference. Many of the plates have been repainted for this edition and a number of new species added. This guide also provides tables, summarising identification features of particularly difficult groups such as nightjars, warblers and rosefinches.
Richard Grimmett is Head of Conservation at BirdLife International. Carol and Tim Inskipp are freelance wildlife consultants. All three authors are widely travelled in Asia and authors of a series of books on the birds of the region.Fatbirder View
I am very impressed with this fieldguide!
The essentials for any such guide are good, ‘clean’, crisp and clear images, good clear distribution maps and tightly focused texts that say what the pictures cannot. This has all those features in spades and can take its place alongside the ‘market leaders’ Collins European guide and Sibley for North America.
A contributory factor is, I am sure, very good printing… how often in the past has a good guide been made mediocre byt poor printing. This book needs such accuracy not just to get the tones right in the illustrations but to make the rather small type readable.
A compromise had to be reached when covering a large area with diverse birdlife – size of type, illustrations and maps etc. versus portability. I doubt such a challenge has been better met – OK it will make your arms ache if you have to hold it and study it for too long and I needed my specs for the type but young fit birders will have neither of these issues.
I thoroughly recommend this and can’t wait to get back to the sub-continent for it to help me fill some gaps in my lists!
Fatbirder