Comprehensively covering Chile

CHILE is one of the most enjoyable birding destinations in South America and having travelled its length I can’t wait to return one day. Despite a few messy political rallies last year, it is a relatively safe country, with outstanding scenery and a varied birdlife of 321 breeding species – 12 of which are endemic. A further 67 species are non-breeders.

You can be forgiven for feeling confused about this new book, as Helm published a guide of the same title in 2003 by Alvaro Jamarillo and illustrated by Peter

Burke and David Beadle. That guide was well received, and you might have imaged that this is a new version of that, but it is not; in fact Jamarillo is still available. Instead, the book we are looking at today started out in 2004 as a 620-page Spanish field guide which was significantly revised and improved in 2017 and has now been repackaged as a slimmer version in English. Also, while Jamarillo included the Falklands, South Georgia and Antarctica, this latest work is only about Chile.

There are currently 509 species

on the Chile list, of which 113 are vagrants. The book says it includes them all, but as it covers only 468, 41 are missing. These are the rarest vagrants, seen fewer than five times. Apart from that it can claim to be comprehensive.

The illustrations by Gonzalo

González are mostly excellent, including plumage variations and more flight images than I have seen in most recent field guides. The format to each page is identical, with birds facing right and perched or flying in the same typical style. This may not please some, but for me it is the best solution for an effective field guide.

The concise species accounts describe identification features, status, range, habitat and voice. The colour distribution maps focus solely on Chile, making them easier to follow than in the 2003 book (which were divided into three areas). There is a checklist at the back, along with lists of threatened birds plus endemic species and subspecies and illustrations of a selection of birds’ eggs.

Many Birdwatch readers will already have Jamarillo’s guide and will be wondering if they should buy this as well. The truth is that although it is a great guide you won’t gain much from having both. Keith Betton

The book launches you straight into the deep end with a chapter deftly explaining what is now known of the relationships between modern birds and their subgroups, and the evidence that shows that oscine songbirds most likely originated in New Guinea. Along the way, we learn about the distinctive behavioural and biological idiosyncrasies of passerines, and the scientific history of our understanding, including the DNA analysis revolution that began in earnest 30 years ago with the work of Charles Sibley and Jon Ahlquist.

Research methods and chronology are clearly explained and a new classification of suborders, infraorders, superfamilies, families, subfamilies and tribes is laid out, before we hit the thick, juicy wedge of the systematic section that makes up most of the book. This is presented in the form of chapters for each major group, containing well-illustrated figures that include paintings of representatives of most genera, detailed phylogenetic trees of the more speciesrich families, ‘heat maps’ showing the most diverse geographical centres of speciation in red and a highly erudite text. This last largely discusses those physiological and behavioural traits most illustrative of evolutionary relationships and the distinctiveness of each family.

But don’t worry – it’s all readable! You will dip into this book many times and emerge much the wiser for it. Which is not to say we know everything; some species and families remain incertae sedis (of uncertain placement), but the theoretical relationships of such unplaceable birds as Blue-capped Ifrit and the chat-tanagers are also the subjects of intriguing discussion.

After we reach the final, more familiar territory of the Passeroidea (which includes pipits, larks, buntings and sparrows), the concluding chapters broach the concepts of biodiversity, how speciation occurs and radiates, the implications of all this information for conservation, and a synthesised summary of the history of passerine evolution and how the changing global geology over the last 60 million years has influenced this.

In such a rapidly changing and broad field there are bound to be some trifling omissions – for instance, I would have liked to see more on the known fossil forms and their likely taxonomic significance. But that’s just personal greed, and this richly scientific book achieves a remarkable feat: making this cutting-edge knowledge readily and readably accessible to a lay audience, while retaining its authority.

Its weight and content make it unlikely that you to keep it by your bed to read recreationally, but the book’s monolithic presence on your shelves will enable the revelations within to be dipped into repeatedly for many enjoyably educational years to come. David Callahan