Guidebooks – Middle East

• Oman
• UAE

Birds of the Middle East use a typical field guide layout with drawings on the right and text and maps on the left. There are four or five species per page. The illustrations are a good size and well-drawn by several different artists.

The maps show the range for permanent residents, breeding residents, and species just passing through on migration. Each species is shown on a map of the whole region, even if the bird is found in only a small part of it.

The text gives a good description of each bird, with additional information on habitat, where the species is only a vagrant, and on migration. The taxonomy and nomenclature used are those of the Ornithological Society of the Middle East, so this may not match up precisely with the major checklists used in Europe or North America. There is no mention of similar species to help with ID.

There is a single index for both English and scientific without divisions by alphabetical order, but family names are bolded, which helps you quickly find the bird you are looking for.

New features in the third edition

• updated text and maps
• 50 additional species and sub-species
• 100 new illustrations
• includes a QR code for vocalizations

If you are going birding in the Middle East, you need this book. However, if you are going to just one or two countries, some have their own guidebooks that are more detailed for that country.

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Oman

Each species has excellent drawings, with several different ones depicting different plumages and flying. The maps show the whole Arabian Peninsula and not only Oman. If you are visiting other countries in the area, this may be a good thing, but if you are going only to Oman, you might like a more detailed map of the area.

There is a good description of each species with additional information on voice, habitat and migration. It does not give information about similar species. The book follows the IOC taxonomic order.

There is one index for English and scientific names, divided by bold letters of the alphabet. This is good as some books run the whole index together without divisions which make it a little harder to find what you are looking for. Family names are also bolding in the index which makes it easy to find the section for specific bird families.

Overall, a very good field guide and printed on quality paper with a plasticized cover that should wear well. Recommended.

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Guidebooks Middle East

The two books above are printed by Princeton and Helm. Books sold in the USA, Canada, and the Philippines are published by Princeton. The identical book sold in the UK and Europe is published by Helm.

United Arab Emirates

Birds of the UAE is not a guidebook. It is more of a bird finding book. It does not tell you how to ID birds, but the pictures and photos can benefit that. Most of the species accounts consist of a black and white drawing of the bird and a paragraph of text that gives you information about abundance, habitat and where to look for the bird. A bar across the top of each species account tells you which month of the year the bird is present in the UAE and their abundance for each month. There are mainly three species per page.

In addition to the black and white drawings of each bird, there are three colour photo sections. The photos do not cover every bird and are not co-located with the species account, but they do give the page number with each photograph for the text. There are photos of 100 of the 280 species covered in the book. Only a few of the species accounts have distribution maps.

The taxonomic order is not any of the mainstream checklists. The book follows Voosu (1977) and Gallagher & Woodcock (1988).

There are two indexes with English and scientific names being separate which makes it quicker to find what you are looking for. In the English index, each species is indented under the family name, which makes finding birds very quick and easy. We wish all indexes were like this. The only thing lacking would be to divide the index into alphabetical sections with a large bold letter at the beginning of each.

Additional Information

The first 38 pages of the book give a lot of general information about birding in the UAE. There is a section, divided by month which tells you which birds are present in that particular month. This is very good information to plan your trip for a specific time period. Next, there is a section describing the various habitats that exist in the UAE. That is followed by a section on each of the emirates that make up the UAE which is also very valuable data.

There is a complete checklist of all the birds found in the UAE where you can check of species you have seen, although its position in the middle of the book makes it more challenging to use.

This book is not a good field guide and is obsolete. If you can get the new Helm guide, that would be much better. However, this book contains valuable information on where to find the birds that are not found in typical field guides, so I would not throw this book out if you get the newer one. The two books together, one for ID and one for finding, would be good.

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This is undoubtedly a much better book than the old one above. However, it seems to have been printed only in small quantities, which makes it scarce and expensive.

An ebook version is available from Bloomsbury for $49.49.

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