I recently received a review copy of Parrots of the World (Princeton Field Guides)
In the preface, Forshaw notes that parrots have always been popular, with a recent surge in parrot watching tours around the world. This book is intended as a field guide to fulfill that interest, and is based on the much larger handbook Parrots of the World: An Identification Guide published by the same duo in 2006.
The book starts off with the standard introduction- parrot morphology, behavior and their status and conservation. Ranking among the most threatened bird groups, Birdlife International lists 123 species out of 356 species (34.6%) as being near threatened to endangered. It is a nice concise introduction to the group although I thought it could have been expanded a bit.
The field guide is organized by region (Afro-asian, Australasian and Neotropical) to make it more useful when birding. I think this was a good move on their part, making the book easier to navigate. The actual illustrations are the real highlight of the book.
An addition I appreciated, for partly nostalgic reasons, is the illustration of flight silhouettes, recalling the inside cover of the Peterson’s guides. I have seen nine species in the book, having only birded in the tropics when I was younger, but it gives me a lot to dream about. With this book in tow, I think I would have been more confident to identify more species. As such, I do not have much authority to judge the book as for its actual utility in the field but I think the review below from the Auk sums it up nicely.
By far the most comprehensive and illustrative handbook for distinguishing all 350 extant psittacines in the world….An essential tool.
-Eduardo E. Iñigo-Elias
Disclosure- I received a complimentary copy of the field guide from Princeton University Press.