How many field guides...

["Rosemary Royle" <>]

Interesting to hear what the von Perlo guide is like. Actually I think you were 
pretty lucky to have had the von Perlo guide - when we went to Brazil in 
October this wasn't available and we used another recent guide by Sigrist which 
was even more frustrating as there is no text, so there are no details of 
behaviour, calls or anything, and the pictures are very variable - ant-things 
quite good, flycatchers poor. And before that - e.g. about 18 months ago - 
there was only one woefully inadequate guide (Souza) which had truly dreadful 
pictures and not all the birds were illustrated. So things are definitely 
moving in the right direction!

(In my experience you always need 2 field guides - for Aus we use Pizzey and 
Knight and Slater neither of which is perfect by any means)

Rosemary Royle
Wales, UK