Sunbirds

Book excerpt: Sunbirds is the first book since the 19th Century to cover in detail all the world's sunbirds and spiderhunters - the Nectarinidae. It also includes the allied families of flowerpeckers and sugarbirds; a total of 176 species is described and illustrated. The book has been designed to help readers identify all of these species and also their various subspecies, the most distinctive of which are illustrated as well as described. Each species account provides a distribution map, a summary of identification criteria and a description of how the species differs from similar ones. The calls and songs, habitat, geographical distribution, status, movements, food (including a list of known food plants), habits, and breeding biology are also described. Finally, a full description of the species and salient features of each subspecies is given, together with measurements and references. Sunbirds not only aids identification, it provides a wealth of information on the ecology and behaviour of these birds. The authors have carried out extensive fieldwork in Asia and Africa. They have also studied skins, nests and eggs held by museums, analysed tape recordings and critically reviewed the vast amount of material contained in books and scientific journals. The superb plates would not have been possible without the exhaustive study of specimens which, together with the use of photographs of living birds, has resulted in the artist, Richard Allen, capturing the essence of the birds, their 'jizz', and accurately portraying the beautiful, bright, often iridescent, plumages of these spectacular families.