Best in the field, 22 Dec 2008
Others have already compared this book to the other East African field guides available, and I agree with them. It combines the high standard of illustrations of the old Collins guide (the same artist, Norman Arlott, was involved in both) with an excellent layout. In paperback version at least, it is sufficiently light enough to use in the field. We all seem to have plates that niggle us slightly, for me it is the birds with irridescent plumage, sunbirds and starlings, that don't seem quite right. Having said that, the illustrations are fine for identification which is, after all, the purpose of the book.

If you are heading to East Africa to watch birds, this is the book for you.

Your search is over..., 10 Jan 2008
This is the best field guide to the birds of East Africa. What more to say? Superb illustrations and succinct summaries have made this book invaluable for all my East African trips.

Best guide for the region , 29 Oct 2007
I own the previous edition of this book before it was published by Helm and Iam assuming that it is the same book (same cover!!)
I was inspired to write this review as I noticed that this book was not getting any love, compared to its nearest rival by Zimmerman. I used this book exclusively during 3 months travelling Kenya and Tanzania and though I did get to look at Zimmerman during this period I think this book is superior in a few small ways:
1. It has text and illustrations on opposites pages rather than a separate plates section. I realise that this is down to personal preference but when using a book as a field guide - having to flick back and forth from plates to text is a no-no for me!!!
2. The illustrations are better. Again subjective but I feel that they are more lifelike and vibrant.
3. It also covers Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi.
Needless to say this is a fantastic book and though Zimmerman is good, I would recommend this one - I certainly made lots of use of it. It was a constant companion and though quite big and heavy it was certainly robust enough to withstand intensive use in the field. This is possibly the 2nd best guide have owned and definately the best African guide I have seen (it also compares favourable with the Struik guides where they cover the same birds - the illustrations are much better in some cases).

A great leap forward, 19 Jan 2005
This field guide is superb and an enormous improvement on the other guides of the area that fall short with poor illustrations, less extensive geographical coverage and/or inadequate text. Critically it brings together in one place excellent illustrations, good maps and most importantly very detailed text. I found the text carefully crafted enabling even members of some of the more difficult groups (e.g. bulbuls and allies) to be relatively easily identified with clear notes to key field marks. It is a pleasure to use for extended periods in the field. My only suggestion for improvement would be to add a few more reference points to the maps.

Accuracy and ease of identification, 03 Dec 2002
I've bought several field guides to the birds of this region and this is by far and away the easiest to use for identifying your encounters on travels in East Africa. The plates are clear, with illustrations of male/female and immature variants. Also the description/narrative lies on the page facing the illustrations - this may sound obvious - but it isn't obvious to those who designed the page layout of the Collins field guide. The Collins has the plates on the centre pages and the narratives at the front and back of the book - this layout makes flicking through in the space of time your bird will sit still quite a challenge! Most of us don't have that kind of time, and would prefer to focus on the bird through our "bins", rather than keep our head in the book looking up several different page references.

I only have one criticism of this Stevenson & Fanshawe guide and that is that the goshawk illustrations somehow show the bird with v short legs, when the long legs are one of the key features you notice when you stumble across one.

I know this guide is more expensive than some of its competitors, but it is worth it.

Best in the field, 22 Dec 2008
Others have already compared this book to the other East African field guides available, and I agree with them. It combines the high standard of illustrations of the old Collins guide (the same artist, Norman Arlott, was involved in both) with an excellent layout. In paperback version at least, it is sufficiently light enough to use in the field. We all seem to have plates that niggle us slightly, for me it is the birds with irridescent plumage, sunbirds and starlings, that don't seem quite right. Having said that, the illustrations are fine for identification which is, after all, the purpose of the book.

If you are heading to East Africa to watch birds, this is the book for you.

Your search is over..., 10 Jan 2008
This is the best field guide to the birds of East Africa. What more to say? Superb illustrations and succinct summaries have made this book invaluable for all my East African trips.

Best guide for the region , 29 Oct 2007
I own the previous edition of this book before it was published by Helm and Iam assuming that it is the same book (same cover!!)
I was inspired to write this review as I noticed that this book was not getting any love, compared to its nearest rival by Zimmerman. I used this book exclusively during 3 months travelling Kenya and Tanzania and though I did get to look at Zimmerman during this period I think this book is superior in a few small ways:
1. It has text and illustrations on opposites pages rather than a separate plates section. I realise that this is down to personal preference but when using a book as a field guide - having to flick back and forth from plates to text is a no-no for me!!!
2. The illustrations are better. Again subjective but I feel that they are more lifelike and vibrant.
3. It also covers Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi.
Needless to say this is a fantastic book and though Zimmerman is good, I would recommend this one - I certainly made lots of use of it. It was a constant companion and though quite big and heavy it was certainly robust enough to withstand intensive use in the field. This is possibly the 2nd best guide have owned and definately the best African guide I have seen (it also compares favourable with the Struik guides where they cover the same birds - the illustrations are much better in some cases).

A great leap forward, 19 Jan 2005
This field guide is superb and an enormous improvement on the other guides of the area that fall short with poor illustrations, less extensive geographical coverage and/or inadequate text. Critically it brings together in one place excellent illustrations, good maps and most importantly very detailed text. I found the text carefully crafted enabling even members of some of the more difficult groups (e.g. bulbuls and allies) to be relatively easily identified with clear notes to key field marks. It is a pleasure to use for extended periods in the field. My only suggestion for improvement would be to add a few more reference points to the maps.

Accuracy and ease of identification, 03 Dec 2002
I've bought several field guides to the birds of this region and this is by far and away the easiest to use for identifying your encounters on travels in East Africa. The plates are clear, with illustrations of male/female and immature variants. Also the description/narrative lies on the page facing the illustrations - this may sound obvious - but it isn't obvious to those who designed the page layout of the Collins field guide. The Collins has the plates on the centre pages and the narratives at the front and back of the book - this layout makes flicking through in the space of time your bird will sit still quite a challenge! Most of us don't have that kind of time, and would prefer to focus on the bird through our "bins", rather than keep our head in the book looking up several different page references.

I only have one criticism of this Stevenson & Fanshawe guide and that is that the goshawk illustrations somehow show the bird with v short legs, when the long legs are one of the key features you notice when you stumble across one.

I know this guide is more expensive than some of its competitors, but it is worth it.

Well used in Botswana, 19 May 2008
I think the illustrations are well ahead of "Newman" and I found it easy to use. It is so important to have the distribution maps on the same page as the plates.

There are so many changes to names and locations that I think it is beneficial to have more than one guide to hand. Our party also had the "Collins" and, between the two we could resolve more than we could with one book. I still cannot do Cisticolas/Warblers though!

Very helpful, intuitive, 10 Feb 2008
Found this really useful in the Kruger park. Quick to get to the pages you want, good images. Have used both Roberts and Newmans in the past and they are both great guides but I found this easier

An excellent field guide for anyone visiting Southern Africa, 24 Aug 2001
When you turn up a guide's house in Zimbabwe and find a book in his expedition packing list you know it's worth carrying with you. A very well laid out and easy to use field guide with reliable colour plates and distribution charts of the species described next to the colour plate, so no flicking back through the book to find the SBJ you think you're looking at lives in a different part of Africa. The plates also include descriptions of behaviour and habitat that are missing from Colins Illustrated Check List to further aid identification.

Best in the field, 22 Dec 2008
Others have already compared this book to the other East African field guides available, and I agree with them. It combines the high standard of illustrations of the old Collins guide (the same artist, Norman Arlott, was involved in both) with an excellent layout. In paperback version at least, it is sufficiently light enough to use in the field. We all seem to have plates that niggle us slightly, for me it is the birds with irridescent plumage, sunbirds and starlings, that don't seem quite right. Having said that, the illustrations are fine for identification which is, after all, the purpose of the book.

If you are heading to East Africa to watch birds, this is the book for you.

Your search is over..., 10 Jan 2008
This is the best field guide to the birds of East Africa. What more to say? Superb illustrations and succinct summaries have made this book invaluable for all my East African trips.

Best guide for the region , 29 Oct 2007
I own the previous edition of this book before it was published by Helm and Iam assuming that it is the same book (same cover!!)
I was inspired to write this review as I noticed that this book was not getting any love, compared to its nearest rival by Zimmerman. I used this book exclusively during 3 months travelling Kenya and Tanzania and though I did get to look at Zimmerman during this period I think this book is superior in a few small ways:
1. It has text and illustrations on opposites pages rather than a separate plates section. I realise that this is down to personal preference but when using a book as a field guide - having to flick back and forth from plates to text is a no-no for me!!!
2. The illustrations are better. Again subjective but I feel that they are more lifelike and vibrant.
3. It also covers Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi.
Needless to say this is a fantastic book and though Zimmerman is good, I would recommend this one - I certainly made lots of use of it. It was a constant companion and though quite big and heavy it was certainly robust enough to withstand intensive use in the field. This is possibly the 2nd best guide have owned and definately the best African guide I have seen (it also compares favourable with the Struik guides where they cover the same birds - the illustrations are much better in some cases).

A great leap forward, 19 Jan 2005
This field guide is superb and an enormous improvement on the other guides of the area that fall short with poor illustrations, less extensive geographical coverage and/or inadequate text. Critically it brings together in one place excellent illustrations, good maps and most importantly very detailed text. I found the text carefully crafted enabling even members of some of the more difficult groups (e.g. bulbuls and allies) to be relatively easily identified with clear notes to key field marks. It is a pleasure to use for extended periods in the field. My only suggestion for improvement would be to add a few more reference points to the maps.

Accuracy and ease of identification, 03 Dec 2002
I've bought several field guides to the birds of this region and this is by far and away the easiest to use for identifying your encounters on travels in East Africa. The plates are clear, with illustrations of male/female and immature variants. Also the description/narrative lies on the page facing the illustrations - this may sound obvious - but it isn't obvious to those who designed the page layout of the Collins field guide. The Collins has the plates on the centre pages and the narratives at the front and back of the book - this layout makes flicking through in the space of time your bird will sit still quite a challenge! Most of us don't have that kind of time, and would prefer to focus on the bird through our "bins", rather than keep our head in the book looking up several different page references.

I only have one criticism of this Stevenson & Fanshawe guide and that is that the goshawk illustrations somehow show the bird with v short legs, when the long legs are one of the key features you notice when you stumble across one.

I know this guide is more expensive than some of its competitors, but it is worth it.

Well used in Botswana, 19 May 2008
I think the illustrations are well ahead of "Newman" and I found it easy to use. It is so important to have the distribution maps on the same page as the plates.

There are so many changes to names and locations that I think it is beneficial to have more than one guide to hand. Our party also had the "Collins" and, between the two we could resolve more than we could with one book. I still cannot do Cisticolas/Warblers though!

Very helpful, intuitive, 10 Feb 2008
Found this really useful in the Kruger park. Quick to get to the pages you want, good images. Have used both Roberts and Newmans in the past and they are both great guides but I found this easier

An excellent field guide for anyone visiting Southern Africa, 24 Aug 2001
When you turn up a guide's house in Zimbabwe and find a book in his expedition packing list you know it's worth carrying with you. A very well laid out and easy to use field guide with reliable colour plates and distribution charts of the species described next to the colour plate, so no flicking back through the book to find the SBJ you think you're looking at lives in a different part of Africa. The plates also include descriptions of behaviour and habitat that are missing from Colins Illustrated Check List to further aid identification.

The best and worst of Lars Jonsson , 24 Aug 2008
This book has a rather complicated pre-history. From 1976 to 1980, the Swedish writer, painter and bird-watcher Lars Jonsson wrote and illustrated a five-volume work on European birds. The reactions were mixed. On the one hand, Jonsson's paintings of birds were rightly admired, and the entire five-book series was translated into English. On the other hand, many Swedish bird-watchers considered the books difficult to use in the field, and expensive to boot. In 1992, Jonsson tried to remedy the problem by publishing a one-volume work based on the previous five volumes. It was called "Birds of Europe". For some reason, it was first published in English. Several editions of it exists. My review is of the 2006 edition, the one with the owl on the cover. (Amazon may have placed this review at some other product pages as well.)

First, the positives. Lars Jonsson is an excellent artist, working in what I suppose could be called the Classical Realist tradition. His illustrations are quite simply great, and almost make the birds come to life. Often, he places the birds in their natural environment, and paints them as they really look like in the field, pre-occupied with wading, perching, eating, or whatever it is birds do. I'm particularly impressed by his ducks, shorebirds, owls, nightjars, thrushes and finches! This makes the book worth the money, for both bird-lovers and art-lovers, and indeed book-lovers.

But is "Birds of Europe" really a good field guide? At the US site of Amazon, several reviewers have expressed a large amount of scepticism on this point. I'm not a bird-watcher myself (my idea of bird-watching is strolling down to some local duck pond to watch the Canadian geese LOL), but I tend to agree. Lars Jonsson is either better at painting birds than at editing books, or perhaps his editor is a lazy bum who coldly calculates that everything with the name "Lars Jonsson" on it will sell, no matter what. For every good illustration, there seems to be an ill-organized, spotty page with dozens of identical-looking flying birds, impossible to tell apart from each other due to confusing captions! Even on the good pages, the captions are often confusing. Sometimes the birds are illustrated on the same page as the species presentation, sometimes on the facing page, and sometimes somewhere else entirely. Some species aren't illustrated at all. And the range maps seem to be all over the place! For some reason, the section on raptors seem particularly screwed up.

There is another problem as well. The book is called "Birds of Europe with North Africa and the Middle East". However, many North African and Mideastern species are illustrated with small pictures only, some are only mentioned in the text, and others aren't mentioned at all! It also looks as if the book doesn't cover the Canary Islands, the Azores and Madeira. And our good old friend, the ring necked parakeet, is only partially illustrated (sic). This stingy treatment hardly justifies the sub-title "with North Africa and the Middle East".

Because of the lay-out problems and bad editing, I cannot give this book five stars. However, as a collection of vintage bird art, it's worth buying anyway. It's a book for your bookshelf, rather than your backpack.


A "must have" for bird lovers - just for the plates, 11 Apr 2006
This is a perfectly viable field guide to the birds of Europe and, if it weren't for the existence of the Collins Guide, it could easily be a top recommendation. One thing marks this book apart from other field guides though: the illustrations are so beautiful that they might have been painted for art's sake alone. I have been fascinated by Jonsson's gulls and shorebirds from an earlier series published by habitat and now to have all the birds together is just wonderful. His paintings capture the "jizz" of the bird better than those of any other artist I know. This book will give great aesthetic pleasure long before (and after) one gets it into the field.

The best field guide published in the last two decades, 23 Jul 2001
I'd been looking for a good, comprehensive field guide for the last ten years and now I've found one! Without a doubt, a book containing quality illustrations (including in flight pictures), a full description of the bird (with call sounds) and a distribution map detailing permanent and migratory sites is a 'must-have' for any real bird-watcher. Having a migratory lifestyle myself I find this to be the only worthwhile bird book to cover UK, Europe and the Middle East (I've yet to go 'spotting' in North Africa!). The blurb on the rear cover says "..best guide for beginners, for use in Britain, and travelling in Europe.." but I would go further than this. I am not a beginner, nor am I a twitcher, I'm simply someone who wants to know which bird they've seen and get to know more about it. It is produced in just the right size for 'in-the-field' watching and is, to me, the only worthwhile bird-book on the market today. Buy it, use it, enjoy it - you won't be disappointed.

Best in the field, 22 Dec 2008
Others have already compared this book to the other East African field guides available, and I agree with them. It combines the high standard of illustrations of the old Collins guide (the same artist, Norman Arlott, was involved in both) with an excellent layout. In paperback version at least, it is sufficiently light enough to use in the field. We all seem to have plates that niggle us slightly, for me it is the birds with irridescent plumage, sunbirds and starlings, that don't seem quite right. Having said that, the illustrations are fine for identification which is, after all, the purpose of the book.

If you are heading to East Africa to watch birds, this is the book for you.

Your search is over..., 10 Jan 2008
This is the best field guide to the birds of East Africa. What more to say? Superb illustrations and succinct summaries have made this book invaluable for all my East African trips.

Best guide for the region , 29 Oct 2007
I own the previous edition of this book before it was published by Helm and Iam assuming that it is the same book (same cover!!)
I was inspired to write this review as I noticed that this book was not getting any love, compared to its nearest rival by Zimmerman. I used this book exclusively during 3 months travelling Kenya and Tanzania and though I did get to look at Zimmerman during this period I think this book is superior in a few small ways:
1. It has text and illustrations on opposites pages rather than a separate plates section. I realise that this is down to personal preference but when using a book as a field guide - having to flick back and forth from plates to text is a no-no for me!!!
2. The illustrations are better. Again subjective but I feel that they are more lifelike and vibrant.
3. It also covers Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi.
Needless to say this is a fantastic book and though Zimmerman is good, I would recommend this one - I certainly made lots of use of it. It was a constant companion and though quite big and heavy it was certainly robust enough to withstand intensive use in the field. This is possibly the 2nd best guide have owned and definately the best African guide I have seen (it also compares favourable with the Struik guides where they cover the same birds - the illustrations are much better in some cases).

A great leap forward, 19 Jan 2005
This field guide is superb and an enormous improvement on the other guides of the area that fall short with poor illustrations, less extensive geographical coverage and/or inadequate text. Critically it brings together in one place excellent illustrations, good maps and most importantly very detailed text. I found the text carefully crafted enabling even members of some of the more difficult groups (e.g. bulbuls and allies) to be relatively easily identified with clear notes to key field marks. It is a pleasure to use for extended periods in the field. My only suggestion for improvement would be to add a few more reference points to the maps.

Accuracy and ease of identification, 03 Dec 2002
I've bought several field guides to the birds of this region and this is by far and away the easiest to use for identifying your encounters on travels in East Africa. The plates are clear, with illustrations of male/female and immature variants. Also the description/narrative lies on the page facing the illustrations - this may sound obvious - but it isn't obvious to those who designed the page layout of the Collins field guide. The Collins has the plates on the centre pages and the narratives at the front and back of the book - this layout makes flicking through in the space of time your bird will sit still quite a challenge! Most of us don't have that kind of time, and would prefer to focus on the bird through our "bins", rather than keep our head in the book looking up several different page references.

I only have one criticism of this Stevenson & Fanshawe guide and that is that the goshawk illustrations somehow show the bird with v short legs, when the long legs are one of the key features you notice when you stumble across one.

I know this guide is more expensive than some of its competitors, but it is worth it.

Well used in Botswana, 19 May 2008
I think the illustrations are well ahead of "Newman" and I found it easy to use. It is so important to have the distribution maps on the same page as the plates.

There are so many changes to names and locations that I think it is beneficial to have more than one guide to hand. Our party also had the "Collins" and, between the two we could resolve more than we could with one book. I still cannot do Cisticolas/Warblers though!

Very helpful, intuitive, 10 Feb 2008
Found this really useful in the Kruger park. Quick to get to the pages you want, good images. Have used both Roberts and Newmans in the past and they are both great guides but I found this easier

An excellent field guide for anyone visiting Southern Africa, 24 Aug 2001
When you turn up a guide's house in Zimbabwe and find a book in his expedition packing list you know it's worth carrying with you. A very well laid out and easy to use field guide with reliable colour plates and distribution charts of the species described next to the colour plate, so no flicking back through the book to find the SBJ you think you're looking at lives in a different part of Africa. The plates also include descriptions of behaviour and habitat that are missing from Colins Illustrated Check List to further aid identification.

The best and worst of Lars Jonsson , 24 Aug 2008
This book has a rather complicated pre-history. From 1976 to 1980, the Swedish writer, painter and bird-watcher Lars Jonsson wrote and illustrated a five-volume work on European birds. The reactions were mixed. On the one hand, Jonsson's paintings of birds were rightly admired, and the entire five-book series was translated into English. On the other hand, many Swedish bird-watchers considered the books difficult to use in the field, and expensive to boot. In 1992, Jonsson tried to remedy the problem by publishing a one-volume work based on the previous five volumes. It was called "Birds of Europe". For some reason, it was first published in English. Several editions of it exists. My review is of the 2006 edition, the one with the owl on the cover. (Amazon may have placed this review at some other product pages as well.)

First, the positives. Lars Jonsson is an excellent artist, working in what I suppose could be called the Classical Realist tradition. His illustrations are quite simply great, and almost make the birds come to life. Often, he places the birds in their natural environment, and paints them as they really look like in the field, pre-occupied with wading, perching, eating, or whatever it is birds do. I'm particularly impressed by his ducks, shorebirds, owls, nightjars, thrushes and finches! This makes the book worth the money, for both bird-lovers and art-lovers, and indeed book-lovers.

But is "Birds of Europe" really a good field guide? At the US site of Amazon, several reviewers have expressed a large amount of scepticism on this point. I'm not a bird-watcher myself (my idea of bird-watching is strolling down to some local duck pond to watch the Canadian geese LOL), but I tend to agree. Lars Jonsson is either better at painting birds than at editing books, or perhaps his editor is a lazy bum who coldly calculates that everything with the name "Lars Jonsson" on it will sell, no matter what. For every good illustration, there seems to be an ill-organized, spotty page with dozens of identical-looking flying birds, impossible to tell apart from each other due to confusing captions! Even on the good pages, the captions are often confusing. Sometimes the birds are illustrated on the same page as the species presentation, sometimes on the facing page, and sometimes somewhere else entirely. Some species aren't illustrated at all. And the range maps seem to be all over the place! For some reason, the section on raptors seem particularly screwed up.

There is another problem as well. The book is called "Birds of Europe with North Africa and the Middle East". However, many North African and Mideastern species are illustrated with small pictures only, some are only mentioned in the text, and others aren't mentioned at all! It also looks as if the book doesn't cover the Canary Islands, the Azores and Madeira. And our good old friend, the ring necked parakeet, is only partially illustrated (sic). This stingy treatment hardly justifies the sub-title "with North Africa and the Middle East".

Because of the lay-out problems and bad editing, I cannot give this book five stars. However, as a collection of vintage bird art, it's worth buying anyway. It's a book for your bookshelf, rather than your backpack.


A "must have" for bird lovers - just for the plates, 11 Apr 2006
This is a perfectly viable field guide to the birds of Europe and, if it weren't for the existence of the Collins Guide, it could easily be a top recommendation. One thing marks this book apart from other field guides though: the illustrations are so beautiful that they might have been painted for art's sake alone. I have been fascinated by Jonsson's gulls and shorebirds from an earlier series published by habitat and now to have all the birds together is just wonderful. His paintings capture the "jizz" of the bird better than those of any other artist I know. This book will give great aesthetic pleasure long before (and after) one gets it into the field.

The best field guide published in the last two decades, 23 Jul 2001
I'd been looking for a good, comprehensive field guide for the last ten years and now I've found one! Without a doubt, a book containing quality illustrations (including in flight pictures), a full description of the bird (with call sounds) and a distribution map detailing permanent and migratory sites is a 'must-have' for any real bird-watcher. Having a migratory lifestyle myself I find this to be the only worthwhile bird book to cover UK, Europe and the Middle East (I've yet to go 'spotting' in North Africa!). The blurb on the rear cover says "..best guide for beginners, for use in Britain, and travelling in Europe.." but I would go further than this. I am not a beginner, nor am I a twitcher, I'm simply someone who wants to know which bird they've seen and get to know more about it. It is produced in just the right size for 'in-the-field' watching and is, to me, the only worthwhile bird-book on the market today. Buy it, use it, enjoy it - you won't be disappointed.

Superb coverage but some plates are inaccurate, 12 Nov 2008
Firstly the good points. The book covers the whole of Africa south of the Sahara including migrants. It weighs about a kilo but is still very useable as field guide. Its comprehensive coverage means it is the only real choice for somewhere like Zambia. The descriptions are brief but good enough and the distribution maps are fine. Illustrations of birds are by colour plates (far superior to photographs). The book is well laid out with the pages colour coded by species, importantly the text, distribution and plates are all next to each other for each bird.
After a couple of trips to Zambia I had made a few hand written notes in the book about accuracy of the colour plates. However, after a trip to Tanzania the number of comments I put in about inaccuracy increased significantly. Most plates are fine but there is a significant percentage that are not quite correct. Its not major things but details of the colours and tones. For example the most distiguishing feature of the greater blue eared starling is the prominent yellow eye, however, the plate shows this to be rather dull and not at all prominent. In Tanzania the guides were all using Fanshawe's East Africa guide and to be brutally honest, it is a far superior publication. I didn't notice any errors in the plates in Fanshawe's guide and also the number of plates per species is vastly increased (I recognise that this is not possible in a book covering a far larger area as it would be far too big).
So, if you want a single book to cover the whole of Africa or are going somewhere (eg Zambia) that is not covered by other guides then get this book. If you're going to East Africa then get Fanshawe's East Africa guide as its far superior. This book is good but it is let down by the accuracy of some plates.

A "must" for all ornithological travellers to Africa, 01 Dec 2003
While I fully agree with the previous reviewer as to the variable quality of some illustrations, I still give this monumental work five stars. The mere fact that we now have a book that depicts all the species within the vast area covered in a decent way deserves praise. This would hardly have been economically possible without the recourse to the illustrations from previous field guides. At any rate, the book gives the intended most welcome overview. For those areas with good regional field guides, it makes sense, of course, to concentrate on those books.
By necessity, the texts in the present book are very short; but they are informative. The range maps do not differentiate by season; there are brief infos in the text, however.

A major breakthrough, 31 Oct 2003
Bird watching in Africa as always been divided to 3 main regions; west, east and south. Consequently, our knowledge of birds in areas outside of these classic boundaries is much more basic. This book is the first time ever that a field guide is aiming for the whole region - from 20 deg N up to 200 nautical miles off the continent shores (including Socotra but not Madagascar, Seychelles and other Indian and Atlantic Ocean Islands). Thus, promoting a more ‘holistic’ view of the African Avifauna and showing species that are less likely to be found in the more traditional field guides.

Many of the plates have been taken from earlier publications (Birds of Southern Africa, Struik 2002 and Birds of Prey of Africa, Struik 1998); others were commissioned specially for this project. Generally, there is a feeling of browsing in one of the SA field guides but with a widen species list. The quality of the plates is always a matter of taste and as been said before, we the ‘birdwatchers’ are very hard to please! Like with other field guides, it is a very fragile balance between art and science and to catch a species ‘jizz’ is a very hard task indeed.
Most of the species have good illustrations that portray distinctive plumages, accurate and realistic and can easily meet the modern standards, some can almost ‘jump out’ from the pages - some Robins, Thrushes, Bulbuls and Canaries are just few examples for these. In some cases, diagnostic flight patterns are also displayed (Nightjars, Crakes, Ducks…). Still there are some that the illustrators did not manage catching the ‘jizz’ properly and missed out a good opportunity to improve earlier plates (some Swallows, Mousebirds, Larks, and Pipits can be examples for that).

With all that in mind, I still think that this book is an essential on each bird lover library. The ability to catch so many species in a compact layout and still stay relatively loyal for details is a major break through! Moreover, its continental scope is vital for the understanding of many conservation projects that are still to take action in the future in order to maintain this rich Avifauna region.

Best in the field, 22 Dec 2008
Others have already compared this book to the other East African field guides available, and I agree with them. It combines the high standard of illustrations of the old Collins guide (the same artist, Norman Arlott, was involved in both) with an excellent layout. In paperback version at least, it is sufficiently light enough to use in the field. We all seem to have plates that niggle us slightly, for me it is the birds with irridescent plumage, sunbirds and starlings, that don't seem quite right. Having said that, the illustrations are fine for identification which is, after all, the purpose of the book.

If you are heading to East Africa to watch birds, this is the book for you.

Your search is over..., 10 Jan 2008
This is the best field guide to the birds of East Africa. What more to say? Superb illustrations and succinct summaries have made this book invaluable for all my East African trips.

Best guide for the region , 29 Oct 2007
I own the previous edition of this book before it was published by Helm and Iam assuming that it is the same book (same cover!!)
I was inspired to write this review as I noticed that this book was not getting any love, compared to its nearest rival by Zimmerman. I used this book exclusively during 3 months travelling Kenya and Tanzania and though I did get to look at Zimmerman during this period I think this book is superior in a few small ways:
1. It has text and illustrations on opposites pages rather than a separate plates section. I realise that this is down to personal preference but when using a book as a field guide - having to flick back and forth from plates to text is a no-no for me!!!
2. The illustrations are better. Again subjective but I feel that they are more lifelike and vibrant.
3. It also covers Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi.
Needless to say this is a fantastic book and though Zimmerman is good, I would recommend this one - I certainly made lots of use of it. It was a constant companion and though quite big and heavy it was certainly robust enough to withstand intensive use in the field. This is possibly the 2nd best guide have owned and definately the best African guide I have seen (it also compares favourable with the Struik guides where they cover the same birds - the illustrations are much better in some cases).

A great leap forward, 19 Jan 2005
This field guide is superb and an enormous improvement on the other guides of the area that fall short with poor illustrations, less extensive geographical coverage and/or inadequate text. Critically it brings together in one place excellent illustrations, good maps and most importantly very detailed text. I found the text carefully crafted enabling even members of some of the more difficult groups (e.g. bulbuls and allies) to be relatively easily identified with clear notes to key field marks. It is a pleasure to use for extended periods in the field. My only suggestion for improvement would be to add a few more reference points to the maps.

Accuracy and ease of identification, 03 Dec 2002
I've bought several field guides to the birds of this region and this is by far and away the easiest to use for identifying your encounters on travels in East Africa. The plates are clear, with illustrations of male/female and immature variants. Also the description/narrative lies on the page facing the illustrations - this may sound obvious - but it isn't obvious to those who designed the page layout of the Collins field guide. The Collins has the plates on the centre pages and the narratives at the front and back of the book - this layout makes flicking through in the space of time your bird will sit still quite a challenge! Most of us don't have that kind of time, and would prefer to focus on the bird through our "bins", rather than keep our head in the book looking up several different page references.

I only have one criticism of this Stevenson & Fanshawe guide and that is that the goshawk illustrations somehow show the bird with v short legs, when the long legs are one of the key features you notice when you stumble across one.

I know this guide is more expensive than some of its competitors, but it is worth it.

Well used in Botswana, 19 May 2008
I think the illustrations are well ahead of "Newman" and I found it easy to use. It is so important to have the distribution maps on the same page as the plates.

There are so many changes to names and locations that I think it is beneficial to have more than one guide to hand. Our party also had the "Collins" and, between the two we could resolve more than we could with one book. I still cannot do Cisticolas/Warblers though!

Very helpful, intuitive, 10 Feb 2008
Found this really useful in the Kruger park. Quick to get to the pages you want, good images. Have used both Roberts and Newmans in the past and they are both great guides but I found this easier

An excellent field guide for anyone visiting Southern Africa, 24 Aug 2001
When you turn up a guide's house in Zimbabwe and find a book in his expedition packing list you know it's worth carrying with you. A very well laid out and easy to use field guide with reliable colour plates and distribution charts of the species described next to the colour plate, so no flicking back through the book to find the SBJ you think you're looking at lives in a different part of Africa. The plates also include descriptions of behaviour and habitat that are missing from Colins Illustrated Check List to further aid identification.

The best and worst of Lars Jonsson , 24 Aug 2008
This book has a rather complicated pre-history. From 1976 to 1980, the Swedish writer, painter and bird-watcher Lars Jonsson wrote and illustrated a five-volume work on European birds. The reactions were mixed. On the one hand, Jonsson's paintings of birds were rightly admired, and the entire five-book series was translated into English. On the other hand, many Swedish bird-watchers considered the books difficult to use in the field, and expensive to boot. In 1992, Jonsson tried to remedy the problem by publishing a one-volume work based on the previous five volumes. It was called "Birds of Europe". For some reason, it was first published in English. Several editions of it exists. My review is of the 2006 edition, the one with the owl on the cover. (Amazon may have placed this review at some other product pages as well.)

First, the positives. Lars Jonsson is an excellent artist, working in what I suppose could be called the Classical Realist tradition. His illustrations are quite simply great, and almost make the birds come to life. Often, he places the birds in their natural environment, and paints them as they really look like in the field, pre-occupied with wading, perching, eating, or whatever it is birds do. I'm particularly impressed by his ducks, shorebirds, owls, nightjars, thrushes and finches! This makes the book worth the money, for both bird-lovers and art-lovers, and indeed book-lovers.

But is "Birds of Europe" really a good field guide? At the US site of Amazon, several reviewers have expressed a large amount of scepticism on this point. I'm not a bird-watcher myself (my idea of bird-watching is strolling down to some local duck pond to watch the Canadian geese LOL), but I tend to agree. Lars Jonsson is either better at painting birds than at editing books, or perhaps his editor is a lazy bum who coldly calculates that everything with the name "Lars Jonsson" on it will sell, no matter what. For every good illustration, there seems to be an ill-organized, spotty page with dozens of identical-looking flying birds, impossible to tell apart from each other due to confusing captions! Even on the good pages, the captions are often confusing. Sometimes the birds are illustrated on the same page as the species presentation, sometimes on the facing page, and sometimes somewhere else entirely. Some species aren't illustrated at all. And the range maps seem to be all over the place! For some reason, the section on raptors seem particularly screwed up.

There is another problem as well. The book is called "Birds of Europe with North Africa and the Middle East". However, many North African and Mideastern species are illustrated with small pictures only, some are only mentioned in the text, and others aren't mentioned at all! It also looks as if the book doesn't cover the Canary Islands, the Azores and Madeira. And our good old friend, the ring necked parakeet, is only partially illustrated (sic). This stingy treatment hardly justifies the sub-title "with North Africa and the Middle East".

Because of the lay-out problems and bad editing, I cannot give this book five stars. However, as a collection of vintage bird art, it's worth buying anyway. It's a book for your bookshelf, rather than your backpack.


A "must have" for bird lovers - just for the plates, 11 Apr 2006
This is a perfectly viable field guide to the birds of Europe and, if it weren't for the existence of the Collins Guide, it could easily be a top recommendation. One thing marks this book apart from other field guides though: the illustrations are so beautiful that they might have been painted for art's sake alone. I have been fascinated by Jonsson's gulls and shorebirds from an earlier series published by habitat and now to have all the birds together is just wonderful. His paintings capture the "jizz" of the bird better than those of any other artist I know. This book will give great aesthetic pleasure long before (and after) one gets it into the field.

The best field guide published in the last two decades, 23 Jul 2001
I'd been looking for a good, comprehensive field guide for the last ten years and now I've found one! Without a doubt, a book containing quality illustrations (including in flight pictures), a full description of the bird (with call sounds) and a distribution map detailing permanent and migratory sites is a 'must-have' for any real bird-watcher. Having a migratory lifestyle myself I find this to be the only worthwhile bird book to cover UK, Europe and the Middle East (I've yet to go 'spotting' in North Africa!). The blurb on the rear cover says "..best guide for beginners, for use in Britain, and travelling in Europe.." but I would go further than this. I am not a beginner, nor am I a twitcher, I'm simply someone who wants to know which bird they've seen and get to know more about it. It is produced in just the right size for 'in-the-field' watching and is, to me, the only worthwhile bird-book on the market today. Buy it, use it, enjoy it - you won't be disappointed.

Superb coverage but some plates are inaccurate, 12 Nov 2008
Firstly the good points. The book covers the whole of Africa south of the Sahara including migrants. It weighs about a kilo but is still very useable as field guide. Its comprehensive coverage means it is the only real choice for somewhere like Zambia. The descriptions are brief but good enough and the distribution maps are fine. Illustrations of birds are by colour plates (far superior to photographs). The book is well laid out with the pages colour coded by species, importantly the text, distribution and plates are all next to each other for each bird.
After a couple of trips to Zambia I had made a few hand written notes in the book about accuracy of the colour plates. However, after a trip to Tanzania the number of comments I put in about inaccuracy increased significantly. Most plates are fine but there is a significant percentage that are not quite correct. Its not major things but details of the colours and tones. For example the most distiguishing feature of the greater blue eared starling is the prominent yellow eye, however, the plate shows this to be rather dull and not at all prominent. In Tanzania the guides were all using Fanshawe's East Africa guide and to be brutally honest, it is a far superior publication. I didn't notice any errors in the plates in Fanshawe's guide and also the number of plates per species is vastly increased (I recognise that this is not possible in a book covering a far larger area as it would be far too big).
So, if you want a single book to cover the whole of Africa or are going somewhere (eg Zambia) that is not covered by other guides then get this book. If you're going to East Africa then get Fanshawe's East Africa guide as its far superior. This book is good but it is let down by the accuracy of some plates.

A "must" for all ornithological travellers to Africa, 01 Dec 2003
While I fully agree with the previous reviewer as to the variable quality of some illustrations, I still give this monumental work five stars. The mere fact that we now have a book that depicts all the species within the vast area covered in a decent way deserves praise. This would hardly have been economically possible without the recourse to the illustrations from previous field guides. At any rate, the book gives the intended most welcome overview. For those areas with good regional field guides, it makes sense, of course, to concentrate on those books.
By necessity, the texts in the present book are very short; but they are informative. The range maps do not differentiate by season; there are brief infos in the text, however.

A major breakthrough, 31 Oct 2003
Bird watching in Africa as always been divided to 3 main regions; west, east and south. Consequently, our knowledge of birds in areas outside of these classic boundaries is much more basic. This book is the first time ever that a field guide is aiming for the whole region - from 20 deg N up to 200 nautical miles off the continent shores (including Socotra but not Madagascar, Seychelles and other Indian and Atlantic Ocean Islands). Thus, promoting a more ‘holistic’ view of the African Avifauna and showing species that are less likely to be found in the more traditional field guides.

Many of the plates have been taken from earlier publications (Birds of Southern Africa, Struik 2002 and Birds of Prey of Africa, Struik 1998); others were commissioned specially for this project. Generally, there is a feeling of browsing in one of the SA field guides but with a widen species list. The quality of the plates is always a matter of taste and as been said before, we the ‘birdwatchers’ are very hard to please! Like with other field guides, it is a very fragile balance between art and science and to catch a species ‘jizz’ is a very hard task indeed.
Most of the species have good illustrations that portray distinctive plumages, accurate and realistic and can easily meet the modern standards, some can almost ‘jump out’ from the pages - some Robins, Thrushes, Bulbuls and Canaries are just few examples for these. In some cases, diagnostic flight patterns are also displayed (Nightjars, Crakes, Ducks…). Still there are some that the illustrators did not manage catching the ‘jizz’ properly and missed out a good opportunity to improve earlier plates (some Swallows, Mousebirds, Larks, and Pipits can be examples for that).

With all that in mind, I still think that this book is an essential on each bird lover library. The ability to catch so many species in a compact layout and still stay relatively loyal for details is a major break through! Moreover, its continental scope is vital for the understanding of many conservation projects that are still to take action in the future in order to maintain this rich Avifauna region.

An unusual but great book of Grey Parrots, 20 Aug 2004
I found unusual this book, it's different from the other ones 'cause it approaches the argument by reviewing various stories of Grey parrot owners from the early 1900.

It's very interesting for everyone wants to start breeding his parrots, because everyone can read true stories of beginners breeders from 1900 through the last century.
The book is very complete: it has a section for feeding, breeding, grey parrot behaviour and his health.

In every section is included some true stories about grey parrot.

There are some color pictures too.

excellent.

Best in the field, 22 Dec 2008
Others have already compared this book to the other East African field guides available, and I agree with them. It combines the high standard of illustrations of the old Collins guide (the same artist, Norman Arlott, was involved in both) with an excellent layout. In paperback version at least, it is sufficiently light enough to use in the field. We all seem to have plates that niggle us slightly, for me it is the birds with irridescent plumage, sunbirds and starlings, that don't seem quite right. Having said that, the illustrations are fine for identification which is, after all, the purpose of the book.

If you are heading to East Africa to watch birds, this is the book for you.

Your search is over..., 10 Jan 2008
This is the best field guide to the birds of East Africa. What more to say? Superb illustrations and succinct summaries have made this book invaluable for all my East African trips.

Best guide for the region , 29 Oct 2007
I own the previous edition of this book before it was published by Helm and Iam assuming that it is the same book (same cover!!)
I was inspired to write this review as I noticed that this book was not getting any love, compared to its nearest rival by Zimmerman. I used this book exclusively during 3 months travelling Kenya and Tanzania and though I did get to look at Zimmerman during this period I think this book is superior in a few small ways:
1. It has text and illustrations on opposites pages rather than a separate plates section. I realise that this is down to personal preference but when using a book as a field guide - having to flick back and forth from plates to text is a no-no for me!!!
2. The illustrations are better. Again subjective but I feel that they are more lifelike and vibrant.
3. It also covers Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi.
Needless to say this is a fantastic book and though Zimmerman is good, I would recommend this one - I certainly made lots of use of it. It was a constant companion and though quite big and heavy it was certainly robust enough to withstand intensive use in the field. This is possibly the 2nd best guide have owned and definately the best African guide I have seen (it also compares favourable with the Struik guides where they cover the same birds - the illustrations are much better in some cases).

A great leap forward, 19 Jan 2005
This field guide is superb and an enormous improvement on the other guides of the area that fall short with poor illustrations, less extensive geographical coverage and/or inadequate text. Critically it brings together in one place excellent illustrations, good maps and most importantly very detailed text. I found the text carefully crafted enabling even members of some of the more difficult groups (e.g. bulbuls and allies) to be relatively easily identified with clear notes to key field marks. It is a pleasure to use for extended periods in the field. My only suggestion for improvement would be to add a few more reference points to the maps.

Accuracy and ease of identification, 03 Dec 2002
I've bought several field guides to the birds of this region and this is by far and away the easiest to use for identifying your encounters on travels in East Africa. The plates are clear, with illustrations of male/female and immature variants. Also the description/narrative lies on the page facing the illustrations - this may sound obvious - but it isn't obvious to those who designed the page layout of the Collins field guide. The Collins has the plates on the centre pages and the narratives at the front and back of the book - this layout makes flicking through in the space of time your bird will sit still quite a challenge! Most of us don't have that kind of time, and would prefer to focus on the bird through our "bins", rather than keep our head in the book looking up several different page references.

I only have one criticism of this Stevenson & Fanshawe guide and that is that the goshawk illustrations somehow show the bird with v short legs, when the long legs are one of the key features you notice when you stumble across one.

I know this guide is more expensive than some of its competitors, but it is worth it.

Well used in Botswana, 19 May 2008
I think the illustrations are well ahead of "Newman" and I found it easy to use. It is so important to have the distribution maps on the same page as the plates.

There are so many changes to names and locations that I think it is beneficial to have more than one guide to hand. Our party also had the "Collins" and, between the two we could resolve more than we could with one book. I still cannot do Cisticolas/Warblers though!

Very helpful, intuitive, 10 Feb 2008
Found this really useful in the Kruger park. Quick to get to the pages you want, good images. Have used both Roberts and Newmans in the past and they are both great guides but I found this easier

An excellent field guide for anyone visiting Southern Africa, 24 Aug 2001
When you turn up a guide's house in Zimbabwe and find a book in his expedition packing list you know it's worth carrying with you. A very well laid out and easy to use field guide with reliable colour plates and distribution charts of the species described next to the colour plate, so no flicking back through the book to find the SBJ you think you're looking at lives in a different part of Africa. The plates also include descriptions of behaviour and habitat that are missing from Colins Illustrated Check List to further aid identification.

The best and worst of Lars Jonsson , 24 Aug 2008
This book has a rather complicated pre-history. From 1976 to 1980, the Swedish writer, painter and bird-watcher Lars Jonsson wrote and illustrated a five-volume work on European birds. The reactions were mixed. On the one hand, Jonsson's paintings of birds were rightly admired, and the entire five-book series was translated into English. On the other hand, many Swedish bird-watchers considered the books difficult to use in the field, and expensive to boot. In 1992, Jonsson tried to remedy the problem by publishing a one-volume work based on the previous five volumes. It was called "Birds of Europe". For some reason, it was first published in English. Several editions of it exists. My review is of the 2006 edition, the one with the owl on the cover. (Amazon may have placed this review at some other product pages as well.)

First, the positives. Lars Jonsson is an excellent artist, working in what I suppose could be called the Classical Realist tradition. His illustrations are quite simply great, and almost make the birds come to life. Often, he places the birds in their natural environment, and paints them as they really look like in the field, pre-occupied with wading, perching, eating, or whatever it is birds do. I'm particularly impressed by his ducks, shorebirds, owls, nightjars, thrushes and finches! This makes the book worth the money, for both bird-lovers and art-lovers, and indeed book-lovers.

But is "Birds of Europe" really a good field guide? At the US site of Amazon, several reviewers have expressed a large amount of scepticism on this point. I'm not a bird-watcher myself (my idea of bird-watching is strolling down to some local duck pond to watch the Canadian geese LOL), but I tend to agree. Lars Jonsson is either better at painting birds than at editing books, or perhaps his editor is a lazy bum who coldly calculates that everything with the name "Lars Jonsson" on it will sell, no matter what. For every good illustration, there seems to be an ill-organized, spotty page with dozens of identical-looking flying birds, impossible to tell apart from each other due to confusing captions! Even on the good pages, the captions are often confusing. Sometimes the birds are illustrated on the same page as the species presentation, sometimes on the facing page, and sometimes somewhere else entirely. Some species aren't illustrated at all. And the range maps seem to be all over the place! For some reason, the section on raptors seem particularly screwed up.

There is another problem as well. The book is called "Birds of Europe with North Africa and the Middle East". However, many North African and Mideastern species are illustrated with small pictures only, some are only mentioned in the text, and others aren't mentioned at all! It also looks as if the book doesn't cover the Canary Islands, the Azores and Madeira. And our good old friend, the ring necked parakeet, is only partially illustrated (sic). This stingy treatment hardly justifies the sub-title "with North Africa and the Middle East".

Because of the lay-out problems and bad editing, I cannot give this book five stars. However, as a collection of vintage bird art, it's worth buying anyway. It's a book for your bookshelf, rather than your backpack.


A "must have" for bird lovers - just for the plates, 11 Apr 2006
This is a perfectly viable field guide to the birds of Europe and, if it weren't for the existence of the Collins Guide, it could easily be a top recommendation. One thing marks this book apart from other field guides though: the illustrations are so beautiful that they might have been painted for art's sake alone. I have been fascinated by Jonsson's gulls and shorebirds from an earlier series published by habitat and now to have all the birds together is just wonderful. His paintings capture the "jizz" of the bird better than those of any other artist I know. This book will give great aesthetic pleasure long before (and after) one gets it into the field.

The best field guide published in the last two decades, 23 Jul 2001
I'd been looking for a good, comprehensive field guide for the last ten years and now I've found one! Without a doubt, a book containing quality illustrations (including in flight pictures), a full description of the bird (with call sounds) and a distribution map detailing permanent and migratory sites is a 'must-have' for any real bird-watcher. Having a migratory lifestyle myself I find this to be the only worthwhile bird book to cover UK, Europe and the Middle East (I've yet to go 'spotting' in North Africa!). The blurb on the rear cover says "..best guide for beginners, for use in Britain, and travelling in Europe.." but I would go further than this. I am not a beginner, nor am I a twitcher, I'm simply someone who wants to know which bird they've seen and get to know more about it. It is produced in just the right size for 'in-the-field' watching and is, to me, the only worthwhile bird-book on the market today. Buy it, use it, enjoy it - you won't be disappointed.

Superb coverage but some plates are inaccurate, 12 Nov 2008
Firstly the good points. The book covers the whole of Africa south of the Sahara including migrants. It weighs about a kilo but is still very useable as field guide. Its comprehensive coverage means it is the only real choice for somewhere like Zambia. The descriptions are brief but good enough and the distribution maps are fine. Illustrations of birds are by colour plates (far superior to photographs). The book is well laid out with the pages colour coded by species, importantly the text, distribution and plates are all next to each other for each bird.
After a couple of trips to Zambia I had made a few hand written notes in the book about accuracy of the colour plates. However, after a trip to Tanzania the number of comments I put in about inaccuracy increased significantly. Most plates are fine but there is a significant percentage that are not quite correct. Its not major things but details of the colours and tones. For example the most distiguishing feature of the greater blue eared starling is the prominent yellow eye, however, the plate shows this to be rather dull and not at all prominent. In Tanzania the guides were all using Fanshawe's East Africa guide and to be brutally honest, it is a far superior publication. I didn't notice any errors in the plates in Fanshawe's guide and also the number of plates per species is vastly increased (I recognise that this is not possible in a book covering a far larger area as it would be far too big).
So, if you want a single book to cover the whole of Africa or are going somewhere (eg Zambia) that is not covered by other guides then get this book. If you're going to East Africa then get Fanshawe's East Africa guide as its far superior. This book is good but it is let down by the accuracy of some plates.

A "must" for all ornithological travellers to Africa, 01 Dec 2003
While I fully agree with the previous reviewer as to the variable quality of some illustrations, I still give this monumental work five stars. The mere fact that we now have a book that depicts all the species within the vast area covered in a decent way deserves praise. This would hardly have been economically possible without the recourse to the illustrations from previous field guides. At any rate, the book gives the intended most welcome overview. For those areas with good regional field guides, it makes sense, of course, to concentrate on those books.
By necessity, the texts in the present book are very short; but they are informative. The range maps do not differentiate by season; there are brief infos in the text, however.

A major breakthrough, 31 Oct 2003
Bird watching in Africa as always been divided to 3 main regions; west, east and south. Consequently, our knowledge of birds in areas outside of these classic boundaries is much more basic. This book is the first time ever that a field guide is aiming for the whole region - from 20 deg N up to 200 nautical miles off the continent shores (including Socotra but not Madagascar, Seychelles and other Indian and Atlantic Ocean Islands). Thus, promoting a more ‘holistic’ view of the African Avifauna and showing species that are less likely to be found in the more traditional field guides.

Many of the plates have been taken from earlier publications (Birds of Southern Africa, Struik 2002 and Birds of Prey of Africa, Struik 1998); others were commissioned specially for this project. Generally, there is a feeling of browsing in one of the SA field guides but with a widen species list. The quality of the plates is always a matter of taste and as been said before, we the ‘birdwatchers’ are very hard to please! Like with other field guides, it is a very fragile balance between art and science and to catch a species ‘jizz’ is a very hard task indeed.
Most of the species have good illustrations that portray distinctive plumages, accurate and realistic and can easily meet the modern standards, some can almost ‘jump out’ from the pages - some Robins, Thrushes, Bulbuls and Canaries are just few examples for these. In some cases, diagnostic flight patterns are also displayed (Nightjars, Crakes, Ducks…). Still there are some that the illustrators did not manage catching the ‘jizz’ properly and missed out a good opportunity to improve earlier plates (some Swallows, Mousebirds, Larks, and Pipits can be examples for that).

With all that in mind, I still think that this book is an essential on each bird lover library. The ability to catch so many species in a compact layout and still stay relatively loyal for details is a major break through! Moreover, its continental scope is vital for the understanding of many conservation projects that are still to take action in the future in order to maintain this rich Avifauna region.

An unusual but great book of Grey Parrots, 20 Aug 2004
I found unusual this book, it's different from the other ones 'cause it approaches the argument by reviewing various stories of Grey parrot owners from the early 1900.

It's very interesting for everyone wants to start breeding his parrots, because everyone can read true stories of beginners breeders from 1900 through the last century.
The book is very complete: it has a section for feeding, breeding, grey parrot behaviour and his health.

In every section is included some true stories about grey parrot.

There are some color pictures too.

excellent.

Schooling psittacines, 16 Aug 2007
What can a bird learn? Irene Pepperberg set out to find out. As with children, the best way to assess what has been learnt is to ask. Primarily for that reason, she chose birds capable of forming human words. An African Grey parrot, who she dubbed Alex [Avian Learning EXperiment], became the subject of her investigations. Earlier efforts in laboratories were unsatisfactory. Why should Mynahs, reputedly excellent mimics, fail to learn speech in laboratory conditions? When in homes with several people providing input, they chatter endlessly, almost to distraction. The solution, Pepperberg decided, was the intense social environment. To that end, she developed a training method that produced astonishing results.

This book thoroughly documents the author's methods and results, providing a fascinating account of the cognitive abilities of at least one psittacine species, the Grey Parrot. Incorporating a technique she calls M/R - for Model/Rival, Pepperberg would "teach" an assistant what she wished Alex to learn. The bird observed this, then was encouraged to emulate the learning experience. This meant the bird had to understand what was to be learned and use its innate abilities to achieve it. Speech was the first lessons, but things moved well beyond simple words quickly. Shapes, colours and materials were the next level, with Alex discriminating among them both singly and in groupings. The object was to understand what Alex could comprehend and act on. Alex also learned to differentiate - "larger", or "different" or, most significantly for a bird - "abscence". He could note when something was missing, naming the missing object. The method resulted in Alex's expressing his own needs and wants, even ending a training session by declaring he wished to quit.

Pepperberg's research findings are in direct contradiction to past scientific efforts. The book is therefore richly detailed with the methods used and was information was obtained. There are photographs of test object layouts, even stills from X-ray videos of how Alex forms his speech. She is clearly challenging the received wisdom of established opinion. She's careful to avoid terms like "consciousness" or even "intelligence", although the latter comes in for some discussion late in the book. She finds only one example of Alex's communication she thinks can be deemed "creative". Much more important, in her view, is that we need to understand previously under-evaluated cognitive capabilities in parrots. They are a long-lived and social species, conditions which lead to interaction among individuals and reinforced learning. Social interaction, combined with carefully devised teaching methods are essential to proper learning, whether with children, other primates or psittacines. The capacity is there, and we need to recognise it. The Alex studies clearly demonstrate that at least these psittacines are capable of far more than the simply mimicry we've long attributed to them. Human primacy in learning, once considered fundamental to our place in Nature, is clearly at an end.

Pepperberg's narrative is thoroughly detailed and supported by an equally thorough bibliography. The reading may be a bit of a slog for the novice reader. The citation method breaks up sentences, a common technique with ethography studies, but cumbersome to cope with. The method is in line with her concern for academic acceptance. She excuses the approach as not desiring "to overwhelm readers with facts and figures" [although there are still plenty of those] but to encourage an enlarged sensitivity to the abilities of non-human species. She has certainly accomplished that task, and admirably. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Anything but bird-brained..., 10 Feb 2004
Dr Irene Pepperberg is well known for her studies on Alex the Grey Parrot and this book provides a thorough and detailed account of some of the studies on Alex, and some the results show the considerable intelligence of parrots.
Already having a Grey Parrot myself, I found the studies particularly interesting, in the hope of unlocking some of my parrots numerical and communicative abilities.

I wouldn't advise the book for a novice in this area - the language used and the scientific detail of the studies might be confusing.

The book is a detailed and absorbing account of some of the abilities of parrots and anyone with an interest in parrots, animal behaviour would find this book fascinating.

Fascinating study but not very readable, 16 Aug 2001
Having just bought a couple of parrots (one is an African Grey) I ordered this book with great enthusiasm. The study is absolutely fascinating and I believe that Pepperberg should be congratulated for her patience and diligence over the 2-3 years she trained Alex. Every parrot owner should read this book at least once so as to get a better understanding of the thought processes behind that noisy, colourful, little friend sat in the corner of the room!!!!

However, this book has one serious fundamental flaw that detracts from its overall readability and enjoyment. Full blown references pepper nearly EVERY paragraph. I'm not sure what the reasoning behind this was but on literally every page 40% of the text is taken up by references. What a waste. More importantly, it makes the book totally unreadable. The continual references disrupt the flow of the narrative and, in one case, I found myself having to skim over 1/2 page of references before a sentence was completed.

Cynics amongst us would say that its just a way of padding out the size of the book. I don't believe that to be the case. I believe that for Pepperberg this book was important and she needs to show that its findings are based on substantial research. Fair enough - but why not simply list all references at the end of each chapter???? Instead they are totally intrusive.

Hence, because of this problem (and it is a problem) I did not finish reading this book although I really wanted to. I think I'll wait for the next edition which will hopefully be restructured.

To summarise, fascinating study that is an important read for all parrot owners. Only problem is it is so darn difficult to read!!!

Wait for the next edition.

Best in the field, 22 Dec 2008
Others have already compared this book to the other East African field guides available, and I agree with them. It combines the high standard of illustrations of the old Collins guide (the same artist, Norman Arlott, was involved in both) with an excellent layout. In paperback version at least, it is sufficiently light enough to use in the field. We all seem to have plates that niggle us slightly, for me it is the birds with irridescent plumage, sunbirds and starlings, that don't seem quite right. Having said that, the illustrations are fine for identification which is, after all, the purpose of the book.

If you are heading to East Africa to watch birds, this is the book for you.

Your search is over..., 10 Jan 2008
This is the best field guide to the birds of East Africa. What more to say? Superb illustrations and succinct summaries have made this book invaluable for all my East African trips.

Best guide for the region , 29 Oct 2007
I own the previous edition of this book before it was published by Helm and Iam assumi