Birds of Southern Africa

Authors: Ian Sinclair, Phil Hockey, Warwick Tarboton
Struik Publishers
Cape Town, 2002
PVC-laminated soft cover, 15x21 cm, 447 pages, throughout colour illustrated

Description:

Firmly established as the region's most comprehensively illustrated guide to birds, and boasting sales of more than 150 000 copies since its publication in 1993, Sasol Birds of Southern Africa has been extensively revised to uphold its Position as a leading guide to southern Africa's 950 bird species and one of the best-selling field guides on the African continent.

In this third edition:

- Species accounts and illustrations have been updated and 27 newly described species are included

- Illustrations have labels highlighting diagnostic features

- Distribution maps have been fully updated and incorporate information from the Atlas of Southern African Birds as well as subsequent sightings of vagrants. Maps now distinguish regions of high and low abundance

- Bird names have been updated and are cross-referenced to names used in earlier editions

Other features include colour coding; a simple numbering System for easy cross-referencing of pictures and text; a checklist of the region's birds; three quick reference guides to locating species; and illustrated family accounts.

Southern Africa's birds in perspective:

Southern Africa is defined as the area south of the Kunene and Zambezi rivers, encompassing Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland and southern and central Mozambique, as well as oceanic waters within 200 nautical miles of the coast. Mozambique north of the Zambezi River is excluded, as its avifauna has closer lies to that of east Africa than it does to that of the regions further south. Southern Africa covers a land area of approximately 3,5 million square kilometres and has high bird diversity: more species breed here than in the United States and Canada combined.

The region's bird list currently Stands at 951 species, of which 144 are endemic (occurring or breeding only in the region) or near-endemic (having ranges which extend only slightly outside the region). The major centre of endemism is in the arid western regions of the Karoo and the Namib Desert.

One of the reasons for southern Africa's high bird diversity is the region's climatic and topographical diversity. The climate ranges from cool-temperate in the southwest to hot and tropical in the north. The southwest of the region experiences a winter rainfall regime, the north and east have summer rains and some of the central parts have a seasonal rainfall. Coupled with these seasonal differences, rainfall increases from west to east. Winter snows are regular on the higher mountains, which rise to 3 500 metres above sea level.

It has long been assumed that the avifauna of southern Africa is well known. However, since the last edition of this book, several new taxa have been described, with most 'splits' relying strongly on molecular data to support them. The splits include Separation of Long-billed Lark into five species, and Clapper Lark into three species. Cape Parrot has been split from Grey-headed Parrot, Damara Hornbill from Red-billed Hornbill, Cape Gull from Kelp Gull and Damara Canary from Black-headed Canary. Black-backed Cisticola has been split into Rufous-winged and Luapula Cisticola and Wandering, Royal, Shy and Yellow-nosed Albatross are now recognised as containing multiple taxa.

It is likely that other cryptic species remain to be discovered among the larks, pipits and cisticolas, and perhaps even the hornbills, so southern African ornithology is set on an exciting track for many years to come. Two species have been deleted from the region's list: the Bimaculated lark's single specimen record from Namibia is untraceable, and the Mascarene Shearwater's validity as a full species is presently under review.

Aims of this book:

Identification skills evolve constantly, and the quest for new knowledge about birds runs a parallel course. In this book, we have tried to keep abreast of these demands: illustrations have been improved and added to, and the maps reflect the most up-to-date information available to us at the time of going to press, greatly assisted by the recently published Atlas of Southern African Birds. Numbers appearing in brackets after species' names are those used in the 6th edition of Roberts' Birds of Southern Africa (1993), the book is geared primarily towards helping birders to identify birds in the field.

The plumage and soft-part coloration of many species vary with age and season and we have illustrated this Variation as far as possible. The text highlights the key identification features of each species and concentrates on the Separation of potentially confusing species. The plates are colour-coded for ready reference, annotated for rapid reference to key features, and there are indexed and illustrated quick-reference guides, as well as a checklist. Where species differ considerably in abundance across their ranges, solid colour has been used to indicate where they are most common; hatching indicates where they are scarcer.

Bird classification and nomenclature:

A new classification of the world's birds, based on molecular research, was published in 1990 (Sibley & Ahlquist 1990, Sibley & Monroe 1990). Evidence from several subsequent studies strongly suggests that this new classification is evolutionarily more correct than the arrangement currently used by most field guides and handbooks worldwide. However, one of the principal aims of any bird field guide is to be user friendly rather than to present a scientifically accurate treatise on the evolutionary and taxonomic relationships of birds. For this reason we have retained the old ordering System with which the majority of birders are familiar.

A problem that has dogged birders worldwide for decades relates to the common names of birds. Different regions of the world and different field guides have used a plethora of different names for many taxa, causing confusion and frustration. Over the past two years, the International Ornithological Committee (IOC) has addressed this problem by appointing a number of regional subcommittees which, collectively, will arrive at a standardised list of common names for all the world's birds - several of these names differ from the names currently in use in southern Africa. This task has largely been completed at the time of writing, and these new names now appear in this book. Change, however, is usually accompanied by some inconvenience.

To make the transition as gentle as possible, we have included both the new names and the names as they appeared in the last edition. A species can thus be looked up in the index under either name. It was with some reluctance that the senior author of this book decided to use these new names, and only time will tell if they will be adopted internationally and locally.