Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan … they all have birds, it turns out. Until now there has never been a field guid to the birds of this regino. Raffael Aye, Manuel Schweizer, and Tobias Roth have written one, and it is called, fittingly, Birds of Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan.

It covers 618 species using 143 plates with multiple birds on a plate, set up in classic Peterson Field Guide format with the range maps right with the bird descriptions across from the illustrations. The illustrations are drawings showing key features. There is a brief but informative overview of habitats to help make sense of the range maps and some helpful information on organizations linked to Central Asian birds and birding, but overall the front matter (and back matter) is minimal. I think that was a good choice given how many birds needed to be crammed into this one book.

To me, the Central Asian bird fauna looks lot like the Central North American bird fauna but with about double or triple the diversity and most of the names are different! The area covered is rather large, running from the Sapsian Sean to China (west to east) and the southern border of Russia to Pakistan and India (to the south). If you are going to the region, this is a good choice among the many …. oh no, wait, there is only one field guid. Let me rephrase: If you are going to the region, you will find this field guid to be useful and the fact that it has no competitors has not diminished its quality. It is a great field guide.

Five families of birds make up the group that could be referred to as the Cotingas and Manakins, which in turn include species with such colorful names as “Pale-bellied Tyrant-Manakin,” “Bare-necked Fruitcrow,” “Peruvian Plantcutter,” and “White-browed Purpletuft.” And certainly, you’ve heard of the Andean Cock-of-theRock. These birds and their relatives are THE famous colorful amazing birds of the Neotropics, the birds people who go to the Jungles of Central and South America go to see. “… the song of the Xcreaming Piha,… the loudest bird on Earth, is used by moviemakers to epitomize jungle soudns the world over, no just in its native South America,” we are told by the authors of Cotingas and Manakins, an amazing new book that you need to either add to your collection right now or give to your favorite birder.

This volume by Guy Kirwan and Graeme Green (no relation) is a thorough and nearly comprehensive guide to the largest groups of South American bird species, including all of the usual key features. There are numerous photographs, excellent maps including both details of movement and migration and, most intriguingly, information about what is NOT known about the distributions of some of the species, so when you are in the field looking at them you can wonder if you’ve discovered something not previously known.

The book covers over 130 species in detail, with 34 color plates (drawings) by Eustace Barnes, and about 400 color photographs and numerous maps. From the authors…”The aim of the book is… to summarise all of the available information on cotingas and manakins in such a way that readers are enthuses to discover more about the birds themselves.” The authors mentioned above and other contributors to the book are all experts in these birds and this region.

This is not a pocket guide; It is a big thick book that is almost 700 pages long, on nice high quality paper. But if you are going to the rain forests of Central or South America you will need to bring it along with your binoculars. Have a nice trip!

Living Dinosaurs: The Evolutionary History of Modern Birds is an academic anthology of key writing about bird evolution. There are two main things that distinguish this book: 1) It includes quite a bit on fossils and their bearing on bird evolution, a refreshing change from DNA-based phylogenies which can by and large only address later questions of bird evolution; and 2) It includes a lot more about the early evolutionary context of birds (such as in the context of theropods) than one usually sees, rather than the diversification of birds per se, though it does address the latter as well.

The book offers an excellent summary of our the current state of knowledge of the origin and evolution of birds. Avian palaeontology had developed in fits and starts, with some of the most important work being done at the very same time as the beginnings of modern evolutionary biology (TH Huxley wrote the key monograph on the first recognized bird fossils), with long periods of relative quiet, then sudden re-evaluations of avian evolution recurring with new discoveries. A modern perspective of bird evolution is quiet different from what dominated even a couple of decades ago. Living birds are a single stem of a diverse radiation of forms within the dinosaurs, with our feathered friends of the present being a very limited representative of that ancient diversity. This, of course, is why the book focuses so much more on fossils than DNA; Direct genetic data is simply unavailable to address these questions.

This edited volume (Gareth Dyke and Gary Kaiser editors) is divided into three main parts. Part one deals with deep evolutionary time, addressing Therapod diversity and Mesozoic avian divergences; The second part addresses the early diversification of modern birds and the Avian tree of life; Part 3 looks at key Avian adaptations such as flight, the interesting and the unique bird brain. Then there is fourth part that serves to tie it all together, addressing the state of living birds and the future of Avian diversity.

This is an academic book and the price reflects this. It’s about $130 list, though the link I provide above will get you a copy of this baby at far less ($90 bucks or so). This may require a trip to the library if you find this interesting!

If you are interested in birds and dinosaurs, have a look at “Are Birds Really Dinosaurs?” at 10,000 Birds.