Birds of Pakistan [Paperback]

Basics: softcover, 2009, 256pp., 93 color plates of all 670+ species, brief but pointed identification text, range maps with four colors

Like four of this book's siblings (Northern India, Southern India, Bhutan, Nepal), this guide is a reduced version of the author's previous and much larger work: A Guide to the Birds of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. This lighter Pakistan version is a true field guide-sized book that focuses on just those birds found in Pakistan. The same illustrations and nearly the same text are used in this book as well as the others.

Taken from its "mother" book, the color illustrations show quite well the 670+ birds found in the country. Most birds are shown with multiple plumages when significant differences exist between genders, age, or subspecies. Each plate contains 3-10 birds, made up of 8-30 illustrations. The non-passerines, especially the raptors, gulls, and shorebirds, are the most crammed with 25-30 illustrations of perched and flying birds. This causes many of the plumages to be a bit small. The swallows are also illustrated slightly small.

Like the book's counterparts, the text is the weaker part of this book. To be clear, the text is not bad by any means, it's just a bit too brief at times. Each bird receives 3-15 lines describing it. This text may not always be sufficient to differentiate between many of the more similar birds (e.g., Bush or Leaf Warblers). Sometimes a line or two is offered about the habitat or distribution. The raptors receive the most coverage (6-17 lines) while the passerines receive the least (e.g., as little as 3-4 lines). There is only the sparsest of information given for vocalizations on some of the birds.

Unique to this book is the inclusion of range maps. None of the other four related books have these. The maps provide very good detail of the bird's range, outlined with four colors representing summer, year-round, wintering, and migrant.

To help supplement the relatively thin text on identification, 8 tables are included as appendices. These provide a comparison list of the more difficult bird groups such as nightjars, warblers, rosefinches, and the Yellow Wagtail subspecies.

This guide will serve you very well in Pakistan and is probably the second-best option, aside from the superior, but more expensive, book "Birds of South Asia" by Rasmussen.

If you're looking at other titles by the author, Grimmett, keep in mind this Pakistan guide is a subset of the master, combined book "Birds of India". This combined version includes range maps for the entire subcontinent region. Basically, if you own Birds of India, you already own everything in this Pakistan book.

I've listed several related books below...
1) Birds of Pakistan: Volumes 1 & 2 by Roberts
2) A Field Guide to Birds of Pakistan by Mirza (ISBN 9698283463)
3) A Guide to the Birds of India... by Grimmett/Inskipp
4) Birds of India... by Grimmett/Inskipp
5) Birds of South Asia: Volumes 1 & 2 by Rassmussen
6) A Field Guide to the Birds of the Indian Subcontinent by Kazmierczak
7) A Photographic Guide to the Birds of India by Grewal/Harvey/Pfister
(written by Soleglad at Avian Review or Avian Books)

The Helm Field guide Birds of Pakistan is certainly a nice guide and an improvement from the much more extensive Birds of the Indian Subcontinent as it focusses on Pakistan only. However, I still miss a number of plates for identification and the drawings frankly speaking do not equal those of e.g. Collins/Swensson's Birds of Europe. Too bad that no flight drawings of e.g. wheatears are included. Inevitably, some areas of Pakistan have been better covered than others, but who is to blame for that?

This books is an absolute joy, the detailed maps for every species are fantastic and the color plates are most beautiful and accurate.

Birds of Pakistan in the past unfortunately have been lumped with birds of India in so many older texts.

This new book however has changed that. It is the most authoritative modern text on Birds of Pakistan. Authors have done an amazing job.

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