Customer Reviews:
 A popular, but disappointing guide October 4, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a popular book. Still the only modern guide for Argentina and the southern parts of Brazil.
The book starts with the plates and descriptions, which followed by some black-and-white plates for flying raptors, and the maps closes the book
Personally I find the illustrations disappointing. In this book it seems that all the forest eagles and hawks have the same powerful built like the Harpy Eagle (which is not true, especially for the Crested Eagle, which looks a bulky bird in this book) or you will think that the King Vulture is the smallest of the neotropical vultures (which is the largest after the Condor). Usually there are 10-15 species on one plate, which makes them very crowded.
On the positive side, the authors tried to fill the space with text, so you wont find a page which is only "half-full". In some cases the text is more useful then the pictures.
The area which is covered, still lacks a good bird book, so I still suggest to buy this. Chile is an exception, the book called Birds of Chile by Jaramillo is far better.
 Quite a good identification guide... November 18, 2003
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
This is quite a good id-guide, and it is the only one covering quite a big part of the world.
Most of the plates are okay. There are some drawbacks however. Cinclodes and Earthcreeper species and a few other birds can hardly be identified using the pictures from this book.
The text is very short (which was intended). Unfortunately, information about voices and habits of birds was ommitted. But the book is small and easy to carry in a bagpack. So it is a very helpful guide when travelling to southern Latin America. But you 'll need other literature back home to solve some id-problems left.
South American Birds October 8, 2003
16 out of 16 found this review helpful
There are only two bird books currently for such a broad expanse of country. This is the better of the two. The advantages are that it contains the wide range of birds and the descriptions and calls of the birds are accurate. The disadvantages are that some of the colours in the pictures are not quite true to life, it does not always show the bird in the most suitable position for recognition. It also has all the plates at the back which show, where you can normally find the bird. This does create a lot of going backwards and forwards if you do not know the bird. Apart from that it proved really useful on my trip in Brasil.
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