Mick,
I am afraid that "Birds of Wallacea" is out of print and the authors
have no plans to reprint. You can still find it at times on the second
hand market, but the last copy I saw listed was priced at USD130.
I have a copy if you would like to borrow it ( there will be the small
matter of a lien on your first born as security :). I regularly get up
to Newie to see my daughter, so I could drop it off at your office.
Cheers,
Carl Clifford
On 10/01/2012, at 9:58 AM, Mick Roderick wrote:
I've come in late on this, but would like to point out that in the
text accounts for range, Robson does provide a detailed description of
range within SE Asia, but it is a subset of the range and status of
the species throughout its entire range. This gives a good indication
of where else the birds occur and I find it very useful. The Aussie
guides have touched on this, but not in a consistent manner like in
Robson (and many other guides). Maybe because we have so many endemic
species?
Also - does anyone know where a copy of "Birds of Wallacea" is
available? I was fortunate enough to blunder into some copies of
Mackinnon and Phillips at the Sabah Museum (wasn't cheap) but have had
trouble tracking down Coates and Bishop. I'm not well-versed with on-
line searches but the sites I have seen it come up on have all said
"out of print".
Mick
________________________________
From: Israel Didham <>
To: Birding Australia <>
Sent: Tuesday, 10 January 2012 5:28 AM
Subject: Bird book for SE Asia
the Robson guide covers mainland SE Asia (Singapore, Peninsular
Malaysia, Thailand, Burma, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia). If going further
eastwards you have the MacKinnon guide to Borneo, Sumatra and Java
(there's also a couple of Borneo specific guides); the Coates and
Bishop guide for Wallacea (the Lesser Sundas and Sulawesi); and then
the Beehler guide for New Guinea. The Wallacea guide alone weighs
almost 2kg.
Robson is really the only guide of use if covering several countries
on the mainland, but it does have certain issues with the pictures.
Especially the babblers are really crap when trying to identify the
birds from them. Its almost like the artist hadn't actually seen any
of the babblers in life. Having said that, I have used it many times
in the field and it is acceptable. The lack of maps in Robson is a bit
of an annoyance but not terribly important (the text is concise but
describes the distribution of subspecies well). Note that there is a
Thai version of the guide (covering Thailand only) which does have
distribution maps.
As also stated, bookdepository.com is cheaper than
bookdepository.co.uk (for those who don't know, delivery is free
worldwide from Book Depository)
________________________________
From: Carl Clifford <>
To: Rosemary Royle <>
Cc: ;
Sent: Tuesday, 10 January 2012 12:02 AM
Subject: Bird book for SE Asia
Rosemary,
I think Craig Robson had to stop somewhere, as SE Asia stretches from
eastern India to Papua and north to the Philippines. I don't think I
would like to lug around a field guide that covers the whole of the
region. It would be nice to have one in the book case though. It would
certainly make a lot more room in it.
Cheers,
Carl Clifford
On 09/01/2012, at 8:36 PM, Rosemary Royle wrote:
re Robson - Birds of South East Asia - I bought this book in the UK
from Amazon for £11.39 in Jan 2011 but it was published by New Holland
and has a yellow cover. Looking inside the cover I see it is the 2007
edition. The lack of maps is an irritant but the distribution
information is all there in the text.
Note that if you are going to Malaysia, as we were, this book does not
cover Sabah!
It would certainly be worth checking that whichever publisher /
retailer you by it from that you get the latest (2009) edition.
Rosemary
|
