- Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: Princeton University Press (1 Aug 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0691124353
- ISBN-13: 978-0691124353
- Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 15.8 x 2.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,296,749 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Review
One of the best bird field guides ever published. -- "Oriental Bird Club Bulletin
This guide is a magnificent achievement, regionally without peer, and clearly the essential guide for future visitors to the region. -- "World Birdwatch, journal of BirdlLife International
This guide is a magnificent achievement, regionally without peer, and clearly the essential guide for future visitors to the region. -- "World Birdwatch, journal of BirdlLife International
Product Description
This concise, updated edition of the award-winning A Guide to the Birds of Southeast Asia (Princeton, 2000) is the most comprehensive, compact guide to this magnificent bird-rich region. It is a complete field and reference guide to the birds of Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. It also covers a wide range of species found in the Indian subcontinent, China, Taiwan, Sumatra, Java, Bali, Borneo, and the Philippines.
- More than 140 full-color plates
- All 1,270 species covered in detail
- Up-to-date text covers the identification, voice, habitat, behavior, and range of all the region's species and distinctive subspecies
- Complete coverage of some fifteen Southeast Asian countries and regions
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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 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).
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 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).
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
18 reviews
25 of 27 people found the following review helpful
Best that you can get isn't perfect...
21 Nov 2007
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I purchased Birds of SE Asia for some birding days I would have in Singapore in November of 2007. Everyone I asked said it was the best you could find...and my search results indicate they are correct, you can not find a better bird guide for this part of the world than Robson's. BUT, and I mean this only for those of you who will seriously digest this book and use it as a field guide as intensely as I did for my two days in the field, it is not perfect. Sure it covers 1270 species, but I only wanted to know about 400 of them in Singapore. Yes, I am sure that Robson used the most up to date information he had at the time of publication, but for the Singapore birds he just didn't have it all right, including some basic scarcity ratings, and in one case the bird plate just wasn't that accurate a plate.
Still, all things being equal, for example NO GUIDE, Robson's guide is a heroic effort to cover a great deal of territory and almost 1300 birds in a FIELD GUIDE sized book. Here he succeeded wonderfully, and I was able to make most of the needed IDs of the 70 or so species I found in 2 days with his guide book.
Until there is something more country specific, I don't think you can find a better guide book for this area of the world...assuming that specific guides for countries don't become available soon, I hope that the author will update his work and include the appropriate corrections soon.
If you are heading to SE Asia and hope to do some birding, don't leave home without it.
Still, all things being equal, for example NO GUIDE, Robson's guide is a heroic effort to cover a great deal of territory and almost 1300 birds in a FIELD GUIDE sized book. Here he succeeded wonderfully, and I was able to make most of the needed IDs of the 70 or so species I found in 2 days with his guide book.
Until there is something more country specific, I don't think you can find a better guide book for this area of the world...assuming that specific guides for countries don't become available soon, I hope that the author will update his work and include the appropriate corrections soon.
If you are heading to SE Asia and hope to do some birding, don't leave home without it.
22 of 24 people found the following review helpful
The Perfect Field Guide
17 Mar 2007
Format:Paperback
This edition is the first quality guide to the birds of Southeast Asia that is easily portable. The original hardback version of Robson's book is too bulky and heavy to be handy in the field. I have used the hardback version for six years and found myself making notes in the field then researching the guide only when I returned to my hotel. I look forward to being able to carry the book with me on most walks. Another vast improvement in the new guide is that the bird descriptions are now on the page facing the illustrations. No more need to thumb back and forth between picture and text. This is the book I've been waiting for!
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Birds of Southeast Asia (Princeton Field Guides)
9 Mar 2007
Format:Paperback
I purchased this guide for a combined trip to Borneo and Peninsula Malaysia. I had a copy of the pocket guide to the Birds of Borneo and was looking for a guide to cover some of the birds that were not pictured in the small Borneo book as well as the Birds of Peninsula Malaysia. For this purpose I was pleased. A few endmic Borneo birds were of course not included but most were included.
As for the stand alone qualities of Birds of Southeast Asia, this is well designed for use in the field. It is compact with a plastic cover and contains an amazing amount of information for its size. The pictures are high quality and when the scale changes on a page, it is noted next to the picture. The inside cover has small pictures of a representative of each family with the starting page # for that family. Species descriptions, including many juveniles & females, voice, range and time of year are included opposite the pictures.
I am writing this prior to my trip so the true test, how many lifers are gleaned from its use, is yet to come.
As for the stand alone qualities of Birds of Southeast Asia, this is well designed for use in the field. It is compact with a plastic cover and contains an amazing amount of information for its size. The pictures are high quality and when the scale changes on a page, it is noted next to the picture. The inside cover has small pictures of a representative of each family with the starting page # for that family. Species descriptions, including many juveniles & females, voice, range and time of year are included opposite the pictures.
I am writing this prior to my trip so the true test, how many lifers are gleaned from its use, is yet to come.
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