Sometimes I dream of South America and the adventures that still exist there. It seems to last continent for the adventure birder. A place where species are still be discovered and new birding areas revealed. Birding along an oxbow lake in Manu or finding Inca Wrens among the ruins of Machu Picchu are some the locales that I see through my mind’s eye. Peru seems like an inevitability in my life at some point. This country is a shining jewel in my personal birding world, my personal El Dorado. Alas, I have not been to Peru (yet), but I can come close to being there though Birds of Peru from Princeton University Press and a little use of my own imagination.
I was lucky enough to receive a hard copy version of Birds of Peru (it is now available in soft cover and e-book versions now) from the great folks at Princeton University Press. Given that Peru has ~1,800 known species, a rather condense format is warranted, otherwise we would end up lugging around a 25 pound tome through customs and into the jungle. A short summary contains the key identification points, habitat associations, voice, and a small, yet detailed range map is present on the left hand page. The habitat portion of each account is absolutely vital. Even with my limited Neotropical birding experience, I have quickly come to understand that the slightest changes in vegetative composition, elevation or slope aspect have profound consequences on the avian community. Birds of Peru goes to great pains to address these determinates of species presence.
The illustrations are outstanding. That is the only way I can describe them. The detail and arrangement of the illustrations is done in the most effective way. The key identifications points really pop out at you when you look at the illustration after reading the text. This sets up a birder-muscle memory type of learning. Generally, I prefer images over illustrations, with many of illustrations coming off to cartoon-like for my tastes. But these illustrations are done in a very life-like manner as i have compare them to photographs of particular species.
One of the authors of Birds of Peru is Ted Parker, a name that rings like a legend in my mind. A wunderkind in every sense of the word, Ted Parker was blessed with the unique combination of the passion, intelligence, and amazingly perceptive senses. The one story that sums up the birder in Ted Parker is when he identified a potential new species from audio recording of a chaotic dawn chorus from Bolivia. The mystery bird turned out to be a new species of antwren, which is describe a year later. I cannot hardly comprehend the mind that can store all the details of songs, calls, ranges, habitats, and seasonality. I could lament that I wish had met him, but instead I chose to be thankful that we were lucky enough to have a Ted Parker among us for as long as we did and his contributions still have ongoing ripples of effect.
Although, I find Birds of Peru an extremely well executed field guide, I do have a bone to pick with the voice section of the accounts. I hate phonetic representations and mnemonics. Repeat, I hate them. I think that this guide would have have really benefitted from an accompanying CD/DVD of the most common songs and other vocalizations of the species covered in the book. I have a really hard time reading “ti-ti tew-tew-tee-teep” for the Black-throated Antbird and having any kind of real understanding of what those syllables sound like in the field. This is where a companion set of vocalizations would really help me out.
Overall, I have done nothing but consume Birds of Peru, trying to digest each species account and illustration. It is my Peru-situational bible of birding. I think that every birder should have as many bird guides as possible in their libraries as possible. It does not matter if you ever make a journey to the far-flung reaches of the Amazon Basin or the rarified air of the Andes. Each guide expands your knowledge and desire to bird even more. Birds of Peru will be a great addition to any birder’s library. You never know if buying this field guide is the gentle nudge that you need to purchase a plane ticket to Lima. I hope someday that my copy is battered and stained from an epic birding trip to Peru.
Peru Birding Tours from Wings
