| |||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £2.95
Trade in A Field Guide to the Birds of Hawaii and the Tropical Pacific for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £2.95, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Special Offer until June 30, 2013: Receive an additional £5 promotional Gift Card, when you trade-in at least £10 worth of books. Learn more
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.
Product Description
Review
An excellent and much-needed guide to the region. (World Birdwatch)
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book was printed in 1989 and is in a sense out of date. It's coloured pictures are good but otherwise I have found this book difficult to use as the layout is strange. I prefer to have the descriptions of birds by their picture. Also the index is not where modern field guides are to be found as it is two thirds through the book.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.0 out of 5 stars
20 reviews
95 of 97 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
The indispensible Tropical Pacific field guide.
11 July 1999
By A Customer
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
Pratt, Bruner, and Dickinson have produced a superb field guide completely covering all the islands of the tropical Pacific from Hawai'i west through Micronesia. This is a true field guide: it gives the field marks of every species, notes problems in identification with special emphasis on distinguishing similar species, and wastes no space on matters not related to identification. (The exception is that Pratt, a significant ornithologist as well as an expert in identification, summarizes controversies in classification whre appropriate.)
The text is organized by order and family, not by region, so the flycatchers of Tahiti appear next to the flycatchers of Palau rather than near other Tahitian birds. But the illustrations are grouped by region: Samoan land birds appear together, regardless of relationships. This greatly facilitates use in the field.
The illustrations are paintings, not photographs, which allows the authors to show similar birds in identical poses as well as eliminating the accidental marks which appear in even the best photographs and can confuse the user.
The authors have chosen to include the extinct birds of the region as well as the living ones. This puts a certain amount of "deadwood" on the illustration pages, which may be detrimental. But, considering that more than one "extinct" bird has been found after being missing for nearly a hundred years, it is probably worth the minor inconvenience.
I have used the book extensively in Hawai'i and believe it to be the best guide Hawai'i's birds. I would not consider being without it anywhere in its area of coverage.
26 of 26 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Getting a bit dated
6 April 2008
By Keet Kopecky
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
Still the best field guide to the birds of the tropical Pacific, Pratt's book is now over 20 years old and in need of revision. The bird life of Hawaii is in a constant state of flux, with species arriving and becoming extinct every decade. One of the most common species today, the African Silverbill, was rare when Pratt's guide was published, so is completely missing from the book. Nesting information, feeding habits, and other aspects of natural history are given very little attention. So, while the serious birder will want to own the book and carry it in the field, it is now necessary to purchase a second book to fill in all the missing information that has come to light in the last two decades. For the birder visiting Hawaii, I recommend also carrying the Hawaii Audubon Society's Hawaii's Birds. It is a lightweight supplement that includes all the new species that one is likely to encounter as well as much more information regarding the habits of each bird.
29 of 31 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Needs reformatting
11 Jan 2007
By James G. Sasser
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
This field guide has excellent sketches of birds but the layout is quite awkward. This guide like most if not all guides breaks down the birds by family groups. This works well for most areas but not Hawaii. As an example, on the first page for Crows and Honeycreepers there are six birds listed, three are extinct, the other three birds all exist on seperate islands, so if I am birding on Kauai and I look on this particular page there is only one bird I would have any chance of seeing but I still have five other birds on the page as a distraction. On the other pages there are on average 8-10 birds per page but once again some are extinct (and not boldly labled as such) while there may only be one or two birds from each island on the pages. My recommendation to make it easier to ID birds in the field would be to put all the extinct Hawai'ian endemic birds on two or more pages (since there are so many of them) for emphasis and then have seperate pages for each island. Since there are so few birds to be found on each of the Hawaiian islands versus say the tropical forests of Costa Rica, I beleive my recommended format would be much less frustrating than the current format of the book to use in the field.
›
Go to Amazon.com to see all 20 reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Reference > Encyclopaedias
- Books > Science & Nature > Biological Sciences > Animal Sciences > Birds
- Books > Science & Nature > Biological Sciences > Reference
- Books > Science & Nature > History & Philosophy > Reference
- Books > Science & Nature > Nature > Reference
- Books > Science & Nature > Nature > Wild Animals > Birds
- Books > Scientific, Technical & Medical
- Books > Sports, Hobbies & Games > Fishing, Birdwatching & Other Outdoor Pursuits > Birdwatching > Asia
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
