Review: Craig Robson 2008/14 Birds of South-East Asia Second Edition [Helm Field Guide]

G’day

I purchased a copy of Robson’s guide via Fishpond prior to my visit to peninsula Malaysia a couple of weeks ago. I already had 2 field guides for the birds of Borneo [Phillipps and Myers], but they only covered a fraction of the species on the mainland.

The positives are that:
1. Robson’s guide covers 1327 species on mainland SE Asia [Burma through to Vietnam] so it covers a fair bit of territory
2. It isn’t overly heavy.

The negatives are:
1. The taxonomy is dated
2. The pictorial plates are separate form the text [very inconvenient]
3. The order in which the species are displayed on the plates is sometimes mixed up
4. The brief descriptions opposite the plates do not give the size range for the species and the drawings are generally not to scale
5. There are no distribution maps [a big omission for visiting birders]
6. There are fewer flight drawings and no use of arrow heads to indicate key field marks.

The bottom line is that there is a usability cost to the large geographic coverage and it is far less useful than the Borneo guides. I would rate it 5 out of 10.

I imagine that an app version could be developed that could be far more user friendly.

Regards, Laurie.