Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Ripped off by the Geelbuikvliegenpikker







Yucatan is a region in southern Mexico. This is *not* a field guide to Yucatan birds, but some kind of rip off operation. While it does contain color photos of the birds in question, there is virtually *no* species information, making it impossible to use this as a field guide (even apart from the fact that it's only available on Kindle). The only pieces of info included are the vernacular names of Yucatanese birds in various obscure European languages. Thus, we learn that the Yellow-Bellied Tyrannulet is called “tyrancik stredoamericky” in Czech, “Geelbuikvliegenpikker” in Dutch and “gulbukig dvärgtyrann” in Swedish. The Northern Beardless-Tyrannulet is called “Tirannetto glabro settentrionale” in Italian. How exactly this is going to help me identify, say, a juvenile individual in the actual rain forests of Mexico is, frankly, less clear. I give this "book" two stars only because of the color photos and the effort it must have taken to obtain all the photo credits (and all the Dutch bird names). Otherwise, only deserves one star.

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