A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Prey of Southern, Central and East Africa

Rating:
Summary: A pocket-size guide easy to use, ideal to carry along
Review: This attractive pocket-size guide is an ideal travel companion reliable and full of information despite its light weight and small format. It is easy to use even for non specialists : texts and photographs are clear and thumbnail color outlines of family group allow for a quick identification of birds. However this guide is not meant to be exhaustive : some species are left-out and you won't learn everything about the birds described. But unless you are a true bird specialist you probably won't mind since the 88 species descibed are the most typical of the 102 occuring in the vast region covered (12 countries south of a line running from Kenya and Uganda to Namibia) and you are not likely to meet the remaining 14 species. For each species described the guide provides clear color photographs selected to show the variations associated with age, sex and color form along with illustrations showing birds in flight, distribution maps and an authoritative text describing key identification features. The text also provides some basic background on the birds habitat range, feeding or breeding habits. Ideally this guide could be used in combination with another pocket-size guide dealing with birds in general such as Ian Sinclair's "Photographic guide to birds of southern Africa".