Product Description

With more than 700 color paintings arranged by families for quick comparison of similar species, and with detailed information on range, habitat, size, and voice, this field guide describes and illustrates 1,038 species of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and El Salvador.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #44690 in Books
• Published on: 1999-03-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

About the Author
Roger Tory Peterson, one of the world's greatest naturalists, received every major award for ornithology, natural science, and conservation, as well as numerous honorary degrees, medals, and citations, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The Peterson Identification System has been called the greatest invention since binoculars, and the Peterson Field Guides® are credited with helping to set the stage for the environmental movement.

Roger Tory Peterson, one of the world's greatest naturalists, received every major award for ornithology, natural science, and conservation, as well as numerous honorary degrees, medals, and citations, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The Peterson Identification System has been called the greatest invention since binoculars, and the Peterson Field Guides® are credited with helping to set the stage for the environmental movement.

Roger Tory Peterson, one of the world's greatest naturalists, received every major award for ornithology, natural science, and conservation, as well as numerous honorary degrees, medals, and citations, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The Peterson Identification System has been called the greatest invention since binoculars, and the Peterson Field Guides® are credited with helping to set the stage for the environmental movement.

Customer Reviews

Mediocre guide to Mexican birds
Not very well bound, not comprehensive and not as well illustrated as other Peterson guides.

Mexican Birds
As someone new to birdwatching I needed to find some good field guides at several points on my recent World Cruise and I bought Peterson's Mexican Birds to use for my visit to two points in Mexico. I found this a quite impressive book, considering the fact that it covers over 1000 species in such a small book, but it is perhaps too concise. The illustrations are good, with arrows showing distinguishing points to look for with closely related species. But all illustrations are in a separate section from the main desctiption and many show only the bird's head. Many birds are not shown and the reader needs to look in one of Peterson's other (US) guides Also, there are no maps, just short defintions of the ranges.
It is not a full field guide and does not give details of habitat but it can be used for identification. (I already had Western Birds which filled the gaps for me.)
As Mexico has so many bird species I suspect that this is the best that can be produced in a book of pocket size. I would recommend it as a handy pocket guide to take in the field. For longer use in Mexico the reader may need a supplementary source of fuller details. It is certainly excellent value for money.

Disappointingly Incomplete
Having loved and used Peterson's excellent Texas guide for years (my first copy having disintegrated years ago, the cover now coming off the second), I found this book woefully disappointing. The back cover states that 1038 species are described and illustrated -- not true! While the illustrations the book does contain are quite wonderful in their usual way, most of the birds already found in Peterson's other North American guides offer only a cursory two or three line description, and no illustration at all -- only the letters E, W, and/or T, which means, simply, go look it up in one of the other books!

Unfortunately for me, I found this book at the last minute at my local public library just before a plane trip to Mexico and only learned about its limitations as I was reading the chapter on "How to Use this Book" after I was already in the air. I am glad I didn't BUY the book. I just wish I had at least brought my Texas guide with me, but I didn't realize I needed it.

The book would have been more appropriately titled, "A Field Guide to the Mexican Birds that We Didn't Already Cover" or "Mexican Birds You Didn't Already Know". Unless you are an expert birder and already know most North American birds by sight, this book is only good as a supplement. Although I had been birding for over 30 years, I found this book to be completely useless as a stand-alone field guide.