Craig Robson

Basics: 2002, softcover, 272 pages, 128 color plates of 950+ species, range maps

With plates and text taken directly out of the author’s larger work from two years earlier (Guide to the Birds of Southeast Asia), this book offers a condensed version for all of Thailand’s birds. This book is a portable field guide and does a good job at illustrating and describing the birds.

The 128 color plates offer quality artistry. Plumages for the different genders, ages, and seasons are displayed as well as both perched and in-flight when relevant. Many of the illustrations have been rearranged and shrunk slightly from the original book to better fit into the plates. Most of the plates contain 8-12 species each and display anywhere from 18-30 different illustrations. This volume creates a somewhat crowded plate with small figures, especially with the raptors, gulls, and terns.

The one-paragraph text for each bird is on the page adjacent to each plate. This information offers concise descriptions of the birds along with the variations between genders, ages, or subspecies. These descriptions detail the bird well but offer almost zero comparisons on how to differentiate it from a similar species. A few additional lines do a good job at describing the bird’s song and calls. A few words are given to describe the habitat.

Each bird has a small range map of Thailand that uses four different colors to represent resident, breeding visitor, wintering, and migrant. The small size of the map (1x2 cm) makes the map useful but only in a general manner; however, the authors did make a valiant attempt to insert detail (scattered patches of color) to represent some of the birds’ broken distributions.

One minor awkward quirk in this book is the method of matching the bird in the plate with the accompanying text on the adjacent page. Each bird is numbered on the plate, which corresponds to the text. However, these numbers are often buried within the text and are not always quickly seen. Sometimes it may not be immediately apparent that bird #3 is not the third bird in the text, but simply another plumage of bird #2; thus, making the third bird in the text now labeled as bird #4.

For just Thailand, this is definitely the best book available with it good plates and concise text. The larger book by the author contains the same illustrations but for all the birds across SE Asia. One other book is recommended for Thailand, which is the 3rd revision (1991) of A Guide to the Birds of Thailand by Lekagul and Round. The plates are less crowded and the illustrations and maps are slightly larger; however, the artistry is just a notch below the Robson book and fewer plumages are shown. The descriptive text is also a little better in Robson’s book.

I’ve listed several related books below…
1) A Guide to the Birds of Thailand by Lekagul/Round (1991)
2) A Photographic Guide to Birds of Thailand by Webster/Fook
3) Birds of Thailand by Eve/Guigue
4) A Guide to the Birds of Southeast Asia by Robson
5) A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Southeast Asia by Strange
6) A Field Guide to the Birds of South-East Asia by King
7) Birds of the Thai-Malay Peninsula: Volumes 1 & 2 by Wells et al.
8) A Photographic Guide to Birds of Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore by Davison/Fook
9) Birds: A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore by Strange
10) Birds of Myanmar by Lwin/Thwin… (lisätietoja)