Great achievement in a small package, 28 Dec 2007
I wanted one field guide that would cover Thailand and Cambodia, and this is the only choice. The plates are just big enough for clarity and to show differential details between species; the information on distribution by area and season was again enough to work from - and better than using more space for maps that would have been far too generalised. To get this much into so small a book and make it so useful is a job well done. Recommended.

A compact and top quality field guide for SE Asia! , 23 May 2006
Between February and April 2006 I tested my copy in the field while birding in Laos: It is an excellent field guide! It is very practical: plastic cover, compact and light enough for field use, texts and illustrations facing each other, good descriptions of species, relevant sub-species, voices, habitats and ranges. In addition the illustrations by 14 different artists are generally good to very good. I recorded about 160 species in two months and was able to easily identify several species new to me thanks to the good quality of the illustrations and the text.
One day while birding around Vientiane my Robson's field guide fell into the mud by accident. It was instantly covered with mud but thanks to its plastic cover, I could easily clean it and continue to use it as before. Most field guides don't automatically come with such a plastic cover and would be permanently damaged in similar circumstances!

I have used some other top quality field guides in other regions of the world: Collins Bird Guide by Mullarney, Svensson, Zetterström and Grant (1999) in Europe, Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America (2003) in USA, Field Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Stevenson and Fanshawe (2002) in Kenya and Pocket Guide to the Birds of the Indian Subcontinent by Grimmet, Inskipp and Inskipp (2001) in Nepal, among others. By comparison I find this new version of Birds of South-east Asia excellent! Describing 1270 species with so much text and so many good illustrations in such a compact field guide is a major achievement! However, some may complain that it uses the Sibley & Monroe taxonomic order and that species distributions are described only in the text without distribution maps. But the lack of maps - that would be inaccurate anyway - obviously enabled to insert more useful information for each species.

Overall, it is an excellent, up-to-date and handy field guide for birding in South-east Asia (it is even smaller than Birds of Thailand by the same author!). A real top quality field guide for the region covering Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. Congratulations to the author and the illustrators! Good value for money but be aware of the possible confusion between the 3 successive versions of this book. The first and more comprehensive version of this guide - excellent reference but bigger and less practical in the field - was already called "A Field Guide to the Birds of South-east Asia" (Craig Robson, 2000). For this new smaller and handier version just ensure that you buy the 304-page version "Birds of South-east Asia" published in 2005 and not the 504-page version published in 2000 (hardcover) or in 2002 (softcover).

Great achievement in a small package, 28 Dec 2007
I wanted one field guide that would cover Thailand and Cambodia, and this is the only choice. The plates are just big enough for clarity and to show differential details between species; the information on distribution by area and season was again enough to work from - and better than using more space for maps that would have been far too generalised. To get this much into so small a book and make it so useful is a job well done. Recommended.

A compact and top quality field guide for SE Asia! , 23 May 2006
Between February and April 2006 I tested my copy in the field while birding in Laos: It is an excellent field guide! It is very practical: plastic cover, compact and light enough for field use, texts and illustrations facing each other, good descriptions of species, relevant sub-species, voices, habitats and ranges. In addition the illustrations by 14 different artists are generally good to very good. I recorded about 160 species in two months and was able to easily identify several species new to me thanks to the good quality of the illustrations and the text.
One day while birding around Vientiane my Robson's field guide fell into the mud by accident. It was instantly covered with mud but thanks to its plastic cover, I could easily clean it and continue to use it as before. Most field guides don't automatically come with such a plastic cover and would be permanently damaged in similar circumstances!

I have used some other top quality field guides in other regions of the world: Collins Bird Guide by Mullarney, Svensson, Zetterström and Grant (1999) in Europe, Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America (2003) in USA, Field Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Stevenson and Fanshawe (2002) in Kenya and Pocket Guide to the Birds of the Indian Subcontinent by Grimmet, Inskipp and Inskipp (2001) in Nepal, among others. By comparison I find this new version of Birds of South-east Asia excellent! Describing 1270 species with so much text and so many good illustrations in such a compact field guide is a major achievement! However, some may complain that it uses the Sibley & Monroe taxonomic order and that species distributions are described only in the text without distribution maps. But the lack of maps - that would be inaccurate anyway - obviously enabled to insert more useful information for each species.

Overall, it is an excellent, up-to-date and handy field guide for birding in South-east Asia (it is even smaller than Birds of Thailand by the same author!). A real top quality field guide for the region covering Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. Congratulations to the author and the illustrators! Good value for money but be aware of the possible confusion between the 3 successive versions of this book. The first and more comprehensive version of this guide - excellent reference but bigger and less practical in the field - was already called "A Field Guide to the Birds of South-east Asia" (Craig Robson, 2000). For this new smaller and handier version just ensure that you buy the 304-page version "Birds of South-east Asia" published in 2005 and not the 504-page version published in 2000 (hardcover) or in 2002 (softcover).

great - but tough, 04 Jan 2009
This book is not for the faint-hearted. It goes into the different Holarctic species (and subspecies) of gulls in great depth.
I live in an inland county and don't often see gulls (apart from black-headed and common) on the ground. So in some ways it is way beyond what I need. But it is a superb reference book. And I'm glad to own it.
The sheer amount of detail and no. of drawings and photographs is breath-taking.
As with all bird identification the secret is to get to know the common species intimately first. So getting to grips with the argentatus and argenteus races of Herring gull is probably my next step. Then, who knows, I may get to the point of being able to pick out a Caspian, yellow-legged or even American herring gull from a mixed flock. If I don't, it won't be the fault of Olsen and Larsson!

Stunning!, 16 Jan 2007
This book won the "Birdwatch" book of the year award in 2004, and it certainly deserved it. Gulls can - if you get into them - pose a fascinating identification challenge, because of the wide range of plumages exhibited by each individual species. This book covers in detail - and I do mean detail - the identification of all 43 "Holarctic" gulls. The species accounts are presented as a series of monographs, and while this means that to compare different species you have to flick between pages I can't think of a better was of presenting this depth of information. For each species there is an excellent text, a distribution map and numerous high quality colour illustrations and photographs covering all they key plumages, including hybrids. There are over 800 photographs in all (an incredible 46 of the humble Herring Gull alone), all with individual notes highlighting the specific features they show. Illustrations and photographs both have their pros and cons as identification aids - with this book you get the best of both worlds.

The standard of presentation is excellent, as usual with a Helm guide, and for the keen birder this book is a joy. A word of caution though - it's really not for beginners, who will be overwhelmed by the amount of detail and will miss the "side by side" comparisons of similar species that are a feature of good general field guides.

Great achievement in a small package, 28 Dec 2007
I wanted one field guide that would cover Thailand and Cambodia, and this is the only choice. The plates are just big enough for clarity and to show differential details between species; the information on distribution by area and season was again enough to work from - and better than using more space for maps that would have been far too generalised. To get this much into so small a book and make it so useful is a job well done. Recommended.

A compact and top quality field guide for SE Asia! , 23 May 2006
Between February and April 2006 I tested my copy in the field while birding in Laos: It is an excellent field guide! It is very practical: plastic cover, compact and light enough for field use, texts and illustrations facing each other, good descriptions of species, relevant sub-species, voices, habitats and ranges. In addition the illustrations by 14 different artists are generally good to very good. I recorded about 160 species in two months and was able to easily identify several species new to me thanks to the good quality of the illustrations and the text.
One day while birding around Vientiane my Robson's field guide fell into the mud by accident. It was instantly covered with mud but thanks to its plastic cover, I could easily clean it and continue to use it as before. Most field guides don't automatically come with such a plastic cover and would be permanently damaged in similar circumstances!

I have used some other top quality field guides in other regions of the world: Collins Bird Guide by Mullarney, Svensson, Zetterström and Grant (1999) in Europe, Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America (2003) in USA, Field Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Stevenson and Fanshawe (2002) in Kenya and Pocket Guide to the Birds of the Indian Subcontinent by Grimmet, Inskipp and Inskipp (2001) in Nepal, among others. By comparison I find this new version of Birds of South-east Asia excellent! Describing 1270 species with so much text and so many good illustrations in such a compact field guide is a major achievement! However, some may complain that it uses the Sibley & Monroe taxonomic order and that species distributions are described only in the text without distribution maps. But the lack of maps - that would be inaccurate anyway - obviously enabled to insert more useful information for each species.

Overall, it is an excellent, up-to-date and handy field guide for birding in South-east Asia (it is even smaller than Birds of Thailand by the same author!). A real top quality field guide for the region covering Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. Congratulations to the author and the illustrators! Good value for money but be aware of the possible confusion between the 3 successive versions of this book. The first and more comprehensive version of this guide - excellent reference but bigger and less practical in the field - was already called "A Field Guide to the Birds of South-east Asia" (Craig Robson, 2000). For this new smaller and handier version just ensure that you buy the 304-page version "Birds of South-east Asia" published in 2005 and not the 504-page version published in 2000 (hardcover) or in 2002 (softcover).

great - but tough, 04 Jan 2009
This book is not for the faint-hearted. It goes into the different Holarctic species (and subspecies) of gulls in great depth.
I live in an inland county and don't often see gulls (apart from black-headed and common) on the ground. So in some ways it is way beyond what I need. But it is a superb reference book. And I'm glad to own it.
The sheer amount of detail and no. of drawings and photographs is breath-taking.
As with all bird identification the secret is to get to know the common species intimately first. So getting to grips with the argentatus and argenteus races of Herring gull is probably my next step. Then, who knows, I may get to the point of being able to pick out a Caspian, yellow-legged or even American herring gull from a mixed flock. If I don't, it won't be the fault of Olsen and Larsson!

Stunning!, 16 Jan 2007
This book won the "Birdwatch" book of the year award in 2004, and it certainly deserved it. Gulls can - if you get into them - pose a fascinating identification challenge, because of the wide range of plumages exhibited by each individual species. This book covers in detail - and I do mean detail - the identification of all 43 "Holarctic" gulls. The species accounts are presented as a series of monographs, and while this means that to compare different species you have to flick between pages I can't think of a better was of presenting this depth of information. For each species there is an excellent text, a distribution map and numerous high quality colour illustrations and photographs covering all they key plumages, including hybrids. There are over 800 photographs in all (an incredible 46 of the humble Herring Gull alone), all with individual notes highlighting the specific features they show. Illustrations and photographs both have their pros and cons as identification aids - with this book you get the best of both worlds.

The standard of presentation is excellent, as usual with a Helm guide, and for the keen birder this book is a joy. A word of caution though - it's really not for beginners, who will be overwhelmed by the amount of detail and will miss the "side by side" comparisons of similar species that are a feature of good general field guides.


Slightly disappointing compared to available guides, 25 Sep 2007
Being a shorebird enthusiast, I have had this title in my sights for a while and planned to purchase it as soon as I could find a copy to look through. I have owned the old Helm guide since it came out but, for portability, in the field I tend to use Sibley or the Collins Bird Guide as a shorebird identification supplement to whatever national guide I am using (that is here in the Western Hemisphere). I felt it was about time I got my library up-to-date with this new volume which promised to supersede all my guides. However, when I finally managed to look over a copy I have to say I found it a little disappointing. For me at least, the illustrations do not match those of Killian Mullarney, Peter Hayman or David Sibley and the text does not seem to add much to the older Helm guide - indeed, I prefer that pioneering guide. It just shows how much care went into the preparation of those older guides - Shorebirds is 21 years old now and still hard to beat! This may be a personal view - and admittedly based on a short perusal - but I could not justify adding the book to my library.

Chris Sharpe, 25 September 2007. ISBN: 071365290X

Helm Field Guides: Waders of Europe, Asia and North America, 06 Feb 2006
Helm’s new field guide covers 125 species of waders in a little over 220 pages and is divided into three sections – Introduction, Waders at rest and Waders in flight.

The 25 page introduction covers many field guide standards such as bird topography, moult, plumage variation and behaviour. It includes a number of useful identification tips and is liberally scattered with Steve’s illustrations including some particularly pleasing ‘looser’ paintings depicting aspects of wader behaviour.

The waders at rest section consists of 45 double page spreads each covering two to four species. The text is concise and starts with a few ‘key ID features’ before covering behaviour, habitat, plumage and confusion species.

Most potential purchasers will look at the illustrations first and this is where the guide scores highly. The large image size and uncluttered design of the plates makes them a joy to browse through or grill intensely. Steve Message has done an excellent job at illustrating a very difficult group of birds and has produced some of the best field guide plates of recent times.

The in flight section gives upper- and under-wing illustrations and brief notes covering key ID features, flight action, voice, distribution and confusion species as well as distribution maps. It finishes with two appendices that tabulate upper- and under-part flight patterns.

This is a very good guide for anyone who wants to take their shorebirding to a new level and will certainly help you identify a Baird’s Sandpiper in Hampshire or a Bar-tailed Godwit in New Hampshire.

Great achievement in a small package, 28 Dec 2007
I wanted one field guide that would cover Thailand and Cambodia, and this is the only choice. The plates are just big enough for clarity and to show differential details between species; the information on distribution by area and season was again enough to work from - and better than using more space for maps that would have been far too generalised. To get this much into so small a book and make it so useful is a job well done. Recommended.

A compact and top quality field guide for SE Asia! , 23 May 2006
Between February and April 2006 I tested my copy in the field while birding in Laos: It is an excellent field guide! It is very practical: plastic cover, compact and light enough for field use, texts and illustrations facing each other, good descriptions of species, relevant sub-species, voices, habitats and ranges. In addition the illustrations by 14 different artists are generally good to very good. I recorded about 160 species in two months and was able to easily identify several species new to me thanks to the good quality of the illustrations and the text.
One day while birding around Vientiane my Robson's field guide fell into the mud by accident. It was instantly covered with mud but thanks to its plastic cover, I could easily clean it and continue to use it as before. Most field guides don't automatically come with such a plastic cover and would be permanently damaged in similar circumstances!

I have used some other top quality field guides in other regions of the world: Collins Bird Guide by Mullarney, Svensson, Zetterström and Grant (1999) in Europe, Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America (2003) in USA, Field Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Stevenson and Fanshawe (2002) in Kenya and Pocket Guide to the Birds of the Indian Subcontinent by Grimmet, Inskipp and Inskipp (2001) in Nepal, among others. By comparison I find this new version of Birds of South-east Asia excellent! Describing 1270 species with so much text and so many good illustrations in such a compact field guide is a major achievement! However, some may complain that it uses the Sibley & Monroe taxonomic order and that species distributions are described only in the text without distribution maps. But the lack of maps - that would be inaccurate anyway - obviously enabled to insert more useful information for each species.

Overall, it is an excellent, up-to-date and handy field guide for birding in South-east Asia (it is even smaller than Birds of Thailand by the same author!). A real top quality field guide for the region covering Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. Congratulations to the author and the illustrators! Good value for money but be aware of the possible confusion between the 3 successive versions of this book. The first and more comprehensive version of this guide - excellent reference but bigger and less practical in the field - was already called "A Field Guide to the Birds of South-east Asia" (Craig Robson, 2000). For this new smaller and handier version just ensure that you buy the 304-page version "Birds of South-east Asia" published in 2005 and not the 504-page version published in 2000 (hardcover) or in 2002 (softcover).

great - but tough, 04 Jan 2009
This book is not for the faint-hearted. It goes into the different Holarctic species (and subspecies) of gulls in great depth.
I live in an inland county and don't often see gulls (apart from black-headed and common) on the ground. So in some ways it is way beyond what I need. But it is a superb reference book. And I'm glad to own it.
The sheer amount of detail and no. of drawings and photographs is breath-taking.
As with all bird identification the secret is to get to know the common species intimately first. So getting to grips with the argentatus and argenteus races of Herring gull is probably my next step. Then, who knows, I may get to the point of being able to pick out a Caspian, yellow-legged or even American herring gull from a mixed flock. If I don't, it won't be the fault of Olsen and Larsson!

Stunning!, 16 Jan 2007
This book won the "Birdwatch" book of the year award in 2004, and it certainly deserved it. Gulls can - if you get into them - pose a fascinating identification challenge, because of the wide range of plumages exhibited by each individual species. This book covers in detail - and I do mean detail - the identification of all 43 "Holarctic" gulls. The species accounts are presented as a series of monographs, and while this means that to compare different species you have to flick between pages I can't think of a better was of presenting this depth of information. For each species there is an excellent text, a distribution map and numerous high quality colour illustrations and photographs covering all they key plumages, including hybrids. There are over 800 photographs in all (an incredible 46 of the humble Herring Gull alone), all with individual notes highlighting the specific features they show. Illustrations and photographs both have their pros and cons as identification aids - with this book you get the best of both worlds.

The standard of presentation is excellent, as usual with a Helm guide, and for the keen birder this book is a joy. A word of caution though - it's really not for beginners, who will be overwhelmed by the amount of detail and will miss the "side by side" comparisons of similar species that are a feature of good general field guides.


Slightly disappointing compared to available guides, 25 Sep 2007
Being a shorebird enthusiast, I have had this title in my sights for a while and planned to purchase it as soon as I could find a copy to look through. I have owned the old Helm guide since it came out but, for portability, in the field I tend to use Sibley or the Collins Bird Guide as a shorebird identification supplement to whatever national guide I am using (that is here in the Western Hemisphere). I felt it was about time I got my library up-to-date with this new volume which promised to supersede all my guides. However, when I finally managed to look over a copy I have to say I found it a little disappointing. For me at least, the illustrations do not match those of Killian Mullarney, Peter Hayman or David Sibley and the text does not seem to add much to the older Helm guide - indeed, I prefer that pioneering guide. It just shows how much care went into the preparation of those older guides - Shorebirds is 21 years old now and still hard to beat! This may be a personal view - and admittedly based on a short perusal - but I could not justify adding the book to my library.

Chris Sharpe, 25 September 2007. ISBN: 071365290X

Helm Field Guides: Waders of Europe, Asia and North America, 06 Feb 2006
Helm’s new field guide covers 125 species of waders in a little over 220 pages and is divided into three sections – Introduction, Waders at rest and Waders in flight.

The 25 page introduction covers many field guide standards such as bird topography, moult, plumage variation and behaviour. It includes a number of useful identification tips and is liberally scattered with Steve’s illustrations including some particularly pleasing ‘looser’ paintings depicting aspects of wader behaviour.

The waders at rest section consists of 45 double page spreads each covering two to four species. The text is concise and starts with a few ‘key ID features’ before covering behaviour, habitat, plumage and confusion species.

Most potential purchasers will look at the illustrations first and this is where the guide scores highly. The large image size and uncluttered design of the plates makes them a joy to browse through or grill intensely. Steve Message has done an excellent job at illustrating a very difficult group of birds and has produced some of the best field guide plates of recent times.

The in flight section gives upper- and under-wing illustrations and brief notes covering key ID features, flight action, voice, distribution and confusion species as well as distribution maps. It finishes with two appendices that tabulate upper- and under-part flight patterns.

This is a very good guide for anyone who wants to take their shorebirding to a new level and will certainly help you identify a Baird’s Sandpiper in Hampshire or a Bar-tailed Godwit in New Hampshire.

A bit of a curate's egg: good in parts, 28 Nov 2000
This is the best guide to the birds of China on the market. However there is not much competition. By the standard of many modern bird books this one is slightly disappointing. The plates are of variable quality with the worst (of geese) being of little assistance in identification. There are too many typographical errors. The text is limited which is to an extent understandable given the number of species described. All in all this book did not quite live up to expectations.

Great achievement in a small package, 28 Dec 2007
I wanted one field guide that would cover Thailand and Cambodia, and this is the only choice. The plates are just big enough for clarity and to show differential details between species; the information on distribution by area and season was again enough to work from - and better than using more space for maps that would have been far too generalised. To get this much into so small a book and make it so useful is a job well done. Recommended.

A compact and top quality field guide for SE Asia! , 23 May 2006
Between February and April 2006 I tested my copy in the field while birding in Laos: It is an excellent field guide! It is very practical: plastic cover, compact and light enough for field use, texts and illustrations facing each other, good descriptions of species, relevant sub-species, voices, habitats and ranges. In addition the illustrations by 14 different artists are generally good to very good. I recorded about 160 species in two months and was able to easily identify several species new to me thanks to the good quality of the illustrations and the text.
One day while birding around Vientiane my Robson's field guide fell into the mud by accident. It was instantly covered with mud but thanks to its plastic cover, I could easily clean it and continue to use it as before. Most field guides don't automatically come with such a plastic cover and would be permanently damaged in similar circumstances!

I have used some other top quality field guides in other regions of the world: Collins Bird Guide by Mullarney, Svensson, Zetterström and Grant (1999) in Europe, Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America (2003) in USA, Field Guide to the Birds of East Africa by Stevenson and Fanshawe (2002) in Kenya and Pocket Guide to the Birds of the Indian Subcontinent by Grimmet, Inskipp and Inskipp (2001) in Nepal, among others. By comparison I find this new version of Birds of South-east Asia excellent! Describing 1270 species with so much text and so many good illustrations in such a compact field guide is a major achievement! However, some may complain that it uses the Sibley & Monroe taxonomic order and that species distributions are described only in the text without distribution maps. But the lack of maps - that would be inaccurate anyway - obviously enabled to insert more useful information for each species.

Overall, it is an excellent, up-to-date and handy field guide for birding in South-east Asia (it is even smaller than Birds of Thailand by the same author!). A real top quality field guide for the region covering Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. Congratulations to the author and the illustrators! Good value for money but be aware of the possible confusion between the 3 successive versions of this book. The first and more comprehensive version of this guide - excellent reference but bigger and less practical in the field - was already called "A Field Guide to the Birds of South-east Asia" (Craig Robson, 2000). For this new smaller and handier version just ensure that you buy the 304-page version "Birds of South-east Asia" published in 2005 and not the 504-page version published in 2000 (hardcover) or in 2002 (softcover).

great - but tough, 04 Jan 2009
This book is not for the faint-hearted. It goes into the different Holarctic species (and subspecies) of gulls in great depth.
I live in an inland county and don't often see gulls (apart from black-headed and common) on the ground. So in some ways it is way beyond what I need. But it is a superb reference book. And I'm glad to own it.
The sheer amount of detail and no. of drawings and photographs is breath-taking.
As with all bird identification the secret is to get to know the common species intimately first. So getting to grips with the argentatus and argenteus races of Herring gull is probably my next step. Then, who knows, I may get to the point of being able to pick out a Caspian, yellow-legged or even American herring gull from a mixed flock. If I don't, it won't be the fault of Olsen and Larsson!

Stunning!, 16 Jan 2007
This book won the "Birdwatch" book of the year award in 2004, and it certainly deserved it. Gulls can - if you get into them - pose a fascinating identification challenge, because of the wide range of plumages exhibited by each individual species. This book covers in detail - and I do mean detail - the identification of all 43 "Holarctic" gulls. The species accounts are presented as a series of monographs, and while this means that to compare different species you have to flick between pages I can't think of a better was of presenting this depth of information. For each species there is an excellent text, a distribution map and numerous high quality colour illustrations and photographs covering all they key plumages, including hybrids. There are over 800 photographs in all (an incredible 46 of the humble Herring Gull alone), all with individual notes highlighting the specific features they show. Illustrations and photographs both have their pros and cons as identification aids - with this book you get the best of both worlds.

The standard of presentation is excellent, as usual with a Helm guide, and for the keen birder this book is a joy. A word of caution though - it's really not for beginners, who will be overwhelmed by the amount of detail and will miss the "side by side" comparisons of similar species that are a feature of good general field guides.


Slightly disappointing compared to available guides, 25 Sep 2007
Being a shorebird enthusiast, I have had this title in my sights for a while and planned to purchase it as soon as I could find a copy to look through. I have owned the old Helm guide since it came out but, for portability, in the field I tend to use Sibley or the Collins Bird Guide as a shorebird identification supplement to whatever national guide I am using (that is here in the Western Hemisphere). I felt it was about time I got my library up-to-date with this new volume which promised to supersede all my guides. However, when I finally managed to look over a copy I have to say I found it a little disappointing. For me at least, the illustrations do not match those of Killian Mullarney, Peter Hayman or David Sibley and the text does not seem to add much to the older Helm guide - indeed, I prefer that pioneering guide. It just shows how much care went into the preparation of those older guides - Shorebirds is 21 years old now and still hard to beat! This may be a personal view - and admittedly based on a short perusal - but I could not justify adding the book to my library.

Chris Sharpe, 25 September 2007. ISBN: 071365290X

Helm Field Guides: Waders of Europe, Asia and North America, 06 Feb 2006
Helm’s new field guide covers 125 species of waders in a little over 220 pages and is divided into three sections – Introduction, Waders at rest and Waders in flight.

The 25 page introduction covers many field guide standards such as bird topography, moult, plumage variation and behaviour. It includes a number of useful identification tips and is liberally scattered with Steve’s illustrations including some particularly pleasing ‘looser’ paintings depicting aspects of wader behaviour.

The waders at rest section consists of 45 double page spreads each covering two to four species. The text is concise and starts with a few ‘key ID features’ before covering behaviour, habitat, plumage and confusion species.

Most potential purchasers will look at the illustrations first and this is where the guide scores highly. The large image size and uncluttered design of the plates makes them a joy to browse through or grill intensely. Steve Message has done an excellent job at illustrating a very difficult group of birds and has produced some of the best field guide plates of recent times.

The in flight section gives upper- and under-wing illustrations and brief notes covering key ID features, flight action, voice, distribution and confusion species as well as distribution maps. It finishes with two appendices that tabulate upper- and under-part flight patterns.

This is a very good guide for anyone who wants to take their shorebirding to a new level and will certainly help you identify a Baird’s Sandpiper in Hampshire or a Bar-tailed Godwit in New Hampshire.

A bit of a curate's egg: good in parts, 28 Nov 2000
This is the best guide to the birds of China on the market. However there is not much competition. By the standard of many modern bird books this one is slightly disappointing. The plates are of variable quality with the worst (of geese) being of little assistance in identification. There are too many typographical errors. The text is limited which is to an extent understandable given the number of species described. All in all this book did not quite live up to expectations.

A very useful book..., 23 Mar 2001
I reviewed this book two years ago- before I had been to Borneo. I was overly optimistic. It is a very useful book - I have travelled extensively in Borneo over the past two years and have always had it with me- I need a new copy as mine is now falling apart. There are however some misleading illustrations, text and some species confusion. One example is Scarlet and Temmincks Sunbird, several times I have met birders on Mt Kinabalu who are unaware of the mistake and don't realise there are different species. This is a good book to carry around but other reference books such as Craig Robson's SE Asian Birds (many species share the range), the new Smythies Bird's of Borneo help sort out confusion. In their defense they have done a good job given the difficulty in viewing some of the species. I assume some of the illustrations were derived from skins which must be difficult. Be aware of some of it's shortcomings but if you are travelling to Borneo buy this book!

A well illustrated guide guide to the birds of the region., 16 Mar 1999
I have been drooling over the birds in this book since I bought it. The illustrations are very good and the text is informative. There are tips on birding in rainforest and how to avoid leeches...

The only thing lacking is distribution maps but this is probably because noone is sure of the distribution of the birds in the region. The plates are very good, Karen Phillips has illustrated several regional bird guides (eg Birds of Hong Kong and South China). Basically this book would be essential to anyone heading this direction. There are illustrations of many of the races found on various islands as well as all the endemics. I can't wait to try it out in the field and see how good it really is!