Birds of Africa South of the Sahara: A Comprehensive Illustrated Field Guide

by Ian Sinclair, Peter Ryan

Birds of Africa South of the Sahara provides unrivalled coverage of African birds in a single volume, and is the first book to describe and illustrate all of the birds found in Africa south of the Sahara Desert (the Afrotropic Region), including Socotra, Pemba and islands in the Gulf of Guinea.

* Some 2,105 species are covered, with an additional 70 vagrants briefly described, and more than 2,000 images assembled on 359 plates.

* Illustrations portray most distinctive plumages, as well as diagnostic flight patterns and major geographic variants.

* Species descriptions give precise identification features, highlighting differences between similar species, as well as briefly reporting habitat, status and calls.

* Distribution maps for each species are based on the latest atlas surveys.

* The most up-to-date taxonomy is used, with many new species described and illustrated for the first time.

Despite its exceptional coverage, this guide is compact enough to use in the field, and follows the standard field guide format, with texts and range maps appearing opposite the color plates.

Genres: Reference, Birds

712 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Nicholas Sly]

A very, very good guide with a huge and admirable scope. However, it suffers from several poor decisions for a modern bird guide. First, the range maps are all a single color, with no distinguishing between residents, migrants, breeding or wintering ranges. This makes telling African breeders from Palearctic migrants at a glance difficult. I don't understand why the authors would think any birder would choose a single color map over one with more information. Second, the coverage of subspecies and geographic variation is spotty and inconsistent, and it is often very hard to tell where the variations depicted even occur within the species' range. And third, there is no information given on bird size or weight, and the birds within each plate do not seem to be drawn to scale in many cases. Excluding size information in these ways is another puzzling omission since it can be so critical to identification.

[Jan-Joost Bouwman]

Excellent field guide for the region, especially where no other good field guides are available. As always with a field guide that covers too great an area the details are often missing. Yes, we would like to see range maps with more detail. Yes, some of the information on the subspecies could be more detailed. But all in all it is an excellent guide, both in the field and back home.
This year's trip to Zambia wasn't the first time I used it, and it probably wasn't the last time either. (still have several countries in the area on my list)

[Jennifer]

A very good guide to birds of Sub Saharan Africa with range maps on each page. The book is massive which makes it a bit heavy to carry around, but it's worth bringing on trips. The range maps aren't always accurate from what I saw and compared to other guide books.