<< Back December 2005

Book Review
Field Guide: The Birds of Machu Picchu
and the Cusco Region by Barry Walker
Reviewed by James Rudolph

Bird watching has become a highly popular pastime in recent years, and is now the passion of an important number of visitors coming to Peru. This handsome 243-page volume is aimed squarely at this segment of Peru's booming tourist market, and the 5,000 copies of its first June 2005 printing are certain to sell like hotcakes.

Its author, Barry Walker, was born near Manchester England, started birdwatching when at the age of thirteen, and moved to Peru in 1983. He is the owner of Manu Expeditions in Manu National Park. The Field Guide is expertly illustrated by world-renowned Norwegian ornithologist Jon Fjeldsa, and includes 32 full-color plates illustrating over 400 species.

Almost half the book's pages consist of species descriptions or “Accounts” of the 417 species that have been recorded in the Machu Picchu wildlife sanctuary and nearby Abra Málaga, the Sacred Valley of the Incas and Cusco. In addition to the delightful plates that - like the accounts - are organized by bird classification, the Guide contains an annotated checklist, a glossary of terms, a bibliography, and indices to English and Latin names. This reader wishes that the author could have also considered the birds' Spanish names; identication of flora and fauna in Peru is inevitably complicated by confusion between English and Spanish names.

By way of introduction, the Guide presents a highly informative essay on the ecology of the Machu Picchu area and the conservation of Andean birds, and another on the classification of birds that includes a detailed illustration of bird anatomy.

Birders in Peru can rejoice at last that they have an alternative to the very pricey Field Guide to the Birds of Peru by James Clements. Barry Walker makes no pretense, however, that his book is as inclusive as Clements' classic field guide. “It is useless to people in Lima,” he e-mailed me, “where the avifauna is completely different from Cusco.”

The Field Guide is available a most major bookstores in Lima, and has a suggested retail price of $30. The publisher, Jim Bartle (jbartle@terra.com.pe), has offered a special discount price, however, to his fellow ACAP members.

<< Back