Look Alike Birds (South African Travel & Field Guides)

Basics: 1994, softcover, 97 pages, 206 species, rough b&w drawings

Disappointment. The concept of this book is good but its quality is poor. The elementary black-and-white sketches and the sparse, generic descriptions surprise me that Kenneth Newman would associate his name with a book so uncharacteristic of his other works.

This booklet illustrates (crudely) 206 South African species grouped into 99 different pairings. Each pairing compares look-alike, or similarly plumaged birds that can frustrate the birder when attempting to distinguish between them in the field (e.g., Greater, Lesser, and Miombo Double-collared Sunbirds).

The drawings are cartoonish depictions of the birds’ plumage patterns. Much of the shading is done by a computer show more with broad wavy lines or crosshatching to quickly fill in large spaces such as wings, back, or, sometimes, the entire bird such as the eagles. This gives a very cheap and distracting appearance.

The text for each bird is limited to 2-3 lines, each consisting of 2-6 words. Some comparisons are too general to be useful. For the three sunbirds mentioned above, the first distinguishing notes offered are: Long bill vs. Medium length bill vs. Similarity to D.C. Sunbird. This is not very useful, especially when the drawings make all three bills look the same. Using a ruler, they even measured out to the same illustrated length.

This book gives the appearance that a great idea was borne and then passed off to someone else of small talent to hastily create. Perhaps the best use of this book would be to take the 99 pairings offered by the authors and to then create your own footnotes that you extract from other field guides. I doubt this book will be of much use to you otherwise. You can take this book as seriously as you do its cover.

I’ve listed several related books below…
1) Birds of Southern Africa by Sinclair
2) Field Guide to the Birds of Southern Africa by Sinclair
3) Illustrated Guide to the Birds of Southern Africa by Sinclair
4) Newman's Birds of Southern Africa by Newman
5) Birds of Africa South of the Sahara by Sinclair/Ryan
5) Newman's Birds of Southern Africa by Peacock show less