Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The new best guide to T&T, 13 April 2008
Just back from T&T, I found the guide very useful and easy to use. The plates aren't perfect, some of the colours can be misleading on some of the plates, but overall the illustrations are very good.
It is light, portable and easy to use in the field and has handy pointers to identifying similar species. The guide lacks detail on habits, but there are other guides that cover this. One complaint would be that the species are indexed by plate number rather than page number. I can't see any good reason for this, it just causes confusion.
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1.0 out of 5 stars
Birds of Trinidad & Tobago by M .Kenefick,R.restall,F.Hayes., 21 Oct 2009
This book is very useful.It is A5 and portable in the field.The colour plates are clear and the index is comprehensive including latin names.There is a handy checklist section so you can log your sightings.General text is minimal but the text against each bird is useful and covers everything you need to know.Recommended.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Birds of Trinidad and Tobago, 6 Aug 2009
Trinidad and Tobago jointly provide a fantastic destination for a birding holiday, particularly in winter. I think it likely that more birders visit these two islands than all others in the Caribbean put together. Their avifauna is in fact allied to South America, with the south-west tip of Trinidad being just 8 miles from Venezuela. It is about the same size as the county of Kent, while pint-sized Tobago would fit into that 16 times. Their bird lists reflect this difference. Putting rarities aside about 106 species regularly occur on both islands, but a further 157 are mainly found on Trinidad and 20 are generally restricted to Tobago. That said, between them there is only one endemic - the critically-endangered Trinidad Piping Guan. With some effort it can be found at Gran Rivière in northern Trinidad. So a carefully planned trip of 10-14 days can easily bring you a decent haul of around 220 species while there are great non-birding distractions such as superb golf courses, first class diving and some very attractive hotels.
The arrival of Richard ffrench's Field Guide to the Birds of Trinidad & Tobago in 1991 fuelled much interest in the islands, and that book has served visitors well ever since. This new guide is dedicated to ffrench and is a worthy successor, with colour plates facing the text for each species in a more modern format. Robin Restall's excellent illustrations have been taken directly from his hefty two-volume Birds of Northern South America to create 107 colour plates. The text has been created by former Sussex birder, Martyn Kenefick and Floyd Hayes (both of whom are now resident in Trinidad). The book is very thorough and all 467 species on the Trinidad and Tobago list are dealt with; nearly 200 of these being vagrants. Even formerly resident species such as Horned Screamer are included - despite none being seen since 1964. Plumage descriptions are given, and particular care has been taken to show migrant warblers in all possible plumages that might be encountered. Voice is described briefly and where similar species are found, these are mentioned. Nomenclature mainly follows the AOU and South American Checklist Committee.
Time-consuming though they are to draw, I am sure that between them, the authors could have created approximate distribution maps for at least the resident and common migrant species, and the lack of these is a missed opportunity. Also, while the text does explain on which island each species can be seen, some simple codes such as "Tr" and "To" next to the scientific names would have been useful. A systematic checklist is given at the back, and again some simple codes could have been added to indicate status - particularly vagrants, although a list of these is given separately.
Most importantly, this book achieves the three main goals for any field guide: it is thorough in its coverage, easy to use in the field, and is lightweight.
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