If like me you remember the ‘early days’ of birding outside Europe, you’ll have memories of mailing off for A4 photo-copied reports with - if you were lucky - a few sketched maps of roads and paths and the odd distinct building pencilled in. I’m not knocking the people who put these reports together - they were produced long before everyone had a computer at home and colour-copying was very expensive - but you had the feeling that there had to be a better way of providing the kind of information that travelling birders so desperately needed…

Over the years we began to see the first “Where to watch…” guidebooks coming out, and over the years they evolved from not much more than a collection of basic reports to something birders could really get their teeth into. And as publishing gets ever more sophisticated and colour reproduction ever more accurate, we reach 2006 and the absolute feast that is the Southern African Birdfinder written by three of the region’s best-known birders/birdguides - Callan Cohen, Claire Spottiswoode, and Jonathan Rossouw - and published by Struik, the well-known company behind books such as Ian Sinclair and Peter Ryan’s Birds of Africa south of the Sahara.

Printed on glossy paper with pin-sharp photographs of both habitats and a good selection of birds, this Guide (as the back cover states) “describes 39 key bird routes and more than 330 birding sites (and their associated birds) across South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Madagascar and the little-documented but increasingly popular areas of Angola, Mozambique, Zambia and Malawi.”

The amount of thought that has gone into presenting this huge volume of stats and facts is evident from the moment you open this book - it is superbly laid-out, and the use of symbols and coloured fonts to highlight key information is widespread but never overwhelming. The text size is easy to read, the maps clear and easy to follow, and the amount of “white-space” on each page gives the whole book a crisp and clean look.

The information inside is what really counts though - and a proper read through just re-enforces how good this book is. Taxonomically bang up-to-date, each section is just packed with mouthwatering birds and where to see them. All sites are “ranked” according to importance, IBAs are marked, the text is absolutely peppered with bird names, and information on eg whether 4WD vehicles are needed is given wherever necessary. I haven’t been to every site to test the accuracy of the text of course (I don’t suppose very many people will have) but the sites I have visited in South Africa and Zimbabwe are immediately recognisable (even if I seem to have missed a few good birds on my visits!).

I’m pretty sure that everything you could possibly need to find the region’s best birds is here - there’s even a fantastic summation towards the back of the book detailing how to find “The Region’s Top 150 Birds” (pages 378 - 407), a must-read for anyone with limited time looking for a specific speciality. Also towards the back is a detailed checklist which not only lists status etc but references every page in the book that the particular species is mentioned on. To top everything off, tucked into a “wallet” on the inside back-cover is a large fold-out road map which shows every site and every route described in the book - an addition that really just proves to the reader that “Birdfinder” has been designed and written by proper field-birders who have got their boots dusty all over the region (you can just imagine them on their travels saying to each other, “You know what would be useful for anyone doing what we’re doing - a map you can actually use…”).

I’m lavishing a great deal of praise on this book, so - just to be fair - is there anything about it I don’t like? Well, I’d personally rather have had one of the region’s beautiful bird species on the cover than the (I’m assured) good-looking birder bloke, but that’s just an opinion - I’m sure others might disagree. And I do have to wonder whether adding Madagascar to the areas covered has resulted in a few mainland sites being dropped for space-saving reasons, but that’s really just speculation and doesn’t detract one jot from what is here: an attractive Guide, that’s packed with info, is up-to-date taxonomically, and is designed by field-birders for field-birders…in other words, a truly wonderful book!

Summary:
Southern African Birdfinder: C Cohen, Spottiswoode C, and Rossouw J (Struik 2006). Softback, 455 pages, colour photographs and maps throughout. Beautifully-produced and superbly designed this is THE essential “bird finder” book for southern Africa. If a better or more attractive “Where to Find…” guide has been produced I’ve never seen it…and for birding the region it is indispensable.