Birds of New Zealand, Hawaii and the Central and West Pacific

This is the first pocket-sized field guide to cover all the west Pacific islands including New Zealand, and it will certainly be useful for those lucky souls able to consider travelling across this ever more accessible but huge region.

The benchmark guide to most of the region was A Field Guide to the Birds of Hawaii and the Tropical Pacific (Pratt 1987), though extra countries have been included here, and the new guide has the now expected plates-opposite-descriptions layout that proves so useful in the field.

After a short introduction to the geology and habitats of the region, there is a useful summary of the region’s avifauna and extant endemics. Unfortunately, these are accompanied by undetailed maps in which the islands are merely depicted as green blobs in a light blue sea with names attached. The distribution maps are hard to understand, and have a disconcerting colour scheme, and i would challenge anyone to discern where the Kamao, a probably extinct Myadestes solitaire, might yet be found from the tiny black blobs and unspecified question mark that make up its distrbution map.  

The author adds an unprecedented proviso regarding his drawing style in the preface, explaining its sketchiness by saying that it is appropriate to impressions gained from fleeting field views. I have to disagree – many species on these islands are notoriously confiding, and if watching an female or immature ’Elepaio on Oahu (plumages not illustrated) down to three metres, I would want to know that it is that island’s endemic subspecies from the details of its plumage, not merely by its location. Van Perlo, like so many others, also ignores the correct Hawaiian or Polynesian spellings of bird names.

Similarly, the illustration of non-breeding Pacific and American Golden Plovers is unlikely to help you tell them apart in a vagrant context, and really one needs a book to hand and not references back at the hotel, as the preface suggests. In fact, the absence of immmature plpumages among the various endemic passerines could prove a real problem in some cases, and

That said, like the similar recent Norman Arlott guides, there is a place for this book in the backpack of those travelling light – even if I’m still waiting expectantly for H Douglas Pratt’s new books: a reference book which will include Easter Island, and a new field guide to Hawaii and Micronesia.

The guide covers all the species likely to be seen even in a protracted sashay through the region and, in truth, many of the species can be ‘done’ by the less discerning solely on range, even if the paintings aren’t quite detailed enough.


Tech spec

• Birds of New Zealand, Hawaii and the Central and West Pacific by Ber van Perlo (HarperCollins Publishers, London).

• 256 pages, 95 colour plates, 29 maps, several line drawings, tables and introductory colour paintings.

• ISBN 9780007287383. Hbk, £29.99.

Available from Birdwatch bookshop

First published in Birdwatch 228:45 (June 2011)