Birds of the Middle East (Helm Wildlife Guides): A Photographic Guide

Photographs excellent, descriptions adequate and to the point.Useful information on locations to birdwatch.Useful book.

I bought this book for my trips to Qatar. As an overview it is ok and the photographs are good. There is a brief resume of each bird including mention of it's range and what time of the year you are likely to see each species. However, I would consider this book as an "aide memoire" and not really useful when it comes to tricky identification.Many of the birds in the Middle East are quite distinctive anyway and this book will suffice yet I felt that when it came to try to distinguish whether a bird seen a long distance was a curlew of Whimbrel, the fact that there was no mention of the eyestripe to differentiate compromised the usefulness of this book. I think it would be the same for other species. More distinctive birds unique to the area could be indentified by this book despite the short-comings. The benefit is that is it a small, lightwieght paperback and that it is sufficient to zone in on a particular species with more accuracy on line. As a field guide, the reference for birding "hot spots" was helpful but it would probably be necessary to go for something more thorough and comprehensive if you are doing serious birdwatching in this area. For the general reading, this book will be of interest.