On 8/6/06, Peter Ewin <> wrote:
My parents (lucky sods) are off on a short trip to South America later in
the year, and I am looking at buying a field guide as a gift for their
travels.... but I am probably thinking about the Chile part
Chile seems to be a very under-birded country, which is a shame.
Patagonia is a remarkable region and the birds are very accessible and
interesting. For guides, the "Birds of Chile" by Alvaro Jaramillo is
absolutely outstanding, highly recommended. This book may be hard to
find in-country, for some reason.
There are a number of other guides for the region:
"Birds of Patagonia, Tierra del Feugo & Antarctic Peninsula", a
photographic guide by E. Couve & C. Vidal. This is readily available
in-country but suffers from the problems of all photo guides. Plus, it
switches passerines to the front of the book which is pretty
disconcerting. You folks may like the book, however, because
photographs are easier to relate to than plates for a lot of people
who are not so into birding. The photos are of uneven quality and the
book is bigger than Alvaro's. Still, it's a worthy effort.
"Birds of Southern South America and Antartica" by La Pena and
Rumboll. This illustrated checklist is just that. Not much in the way
of notes and not the best of all plates. Still, it covers a lot of
ground and is compact.
"Birds of Argentina & Uruguay" by Narosky and Yzurieta is pretty
shocking, by modern standards. Argentina needs a new guide. With one
of the other books, there's no need for this one in Argentinian
Patagonia.
I hope your folks have a great trip!
P.S. I've got a few more notes on the guides and some penguin pictures
from the Falklands at
http://www.wombatcountry.com/trips/falklands_2006/index.html. I'll
post a proper trip report whenever I find the time...
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David Adams
Wallaga Lake 2546 NSW
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