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From: dgraham@kean.ucs.mun.ca (David Graham)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: Field guides for Mexico?
Message-ID: <170104@kean.ucs.mun.ca>
Date: 13 Dec 90 09:10:48 GMT
References: <1381@ucsvc.ucs.unimelb.edu.au> <1990Dec12.165646.28302@midway.uchicago.edu>
Organization: Memorial University. St.John's Nfld, Canada
Lines: 30

In article <1990Dec12.165646.28302@midway.uchicago.edu>,
bob@delphi.uchicago.edu (Robert S. Lewis, Jr.) writes: 
> 
> I've never had the chance to birdwatch in Mexico, so I can't judge
> which of the Mexican and Central American Guides are most useful, but
> I would suggest bringing a good North American guide (like the
> National Geographic Guide) along with you, because I think many of the
> Mexican and Central American guides widely available in the US are
> written with the assumption that they will be used by US birders who
> are already completely familiar with the many US birds that also occur
> in Mexico. The guides, therefore, tend to provide only brief
> descriptions of the birds common to the US and Mexico.  If you don't
> already know US birds, you'll probably find the Mexican field guides
> inadequate by themselves.  

This is an excellent suggestion, I think. The Peterson Mexican Field 
Guide simply refers you to his other guides for a lot of common N.A. 
species, so the Mexican guide *by itself* is not that useful. Despite 
what Annika says, however, the Peterson Mexican guide has been highly 
recommended to me by a birder here with a lot of tropical experience 
and several Mexican trips. The one to stay away from is Irby Davis' _A 
Field Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Central America_--it has lots 
of illustrations of different subspecies, but almost all are treated 
as valid species, and he has invented a ton of non-standard names for 
them, which makes actually trying to *use* the book next to 
impossible. 
-- 
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   David Graham					dgraham@kean.ucs.mun.ca  
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