Newman's Birds by Colour

Kenneth Newman with Irene Bredenkamp and Phoebus Perdikis
Struik Publishers, Cape Town

Full colour artwork throughout.
Paperback: 165x245mm. ISBN: 1-86872-448-4

When Newman's Birds of Southern Africa was first published by Macmillan in 1983, it was nothing short of a revelation. Here was an easy to use field guide with clear, sizeable illustrations, with a brief descriptive text and an accurate distribution map alongside. It was so much easier to use than the dated, although more comprehensive Roberts' Birds of Southern Africa (first published in 1940) that it inspired a new generation of birdwatchers. With this user-friendly field guide, Ken Newman quickly became a household name as an interest in birds was awakened across the sub-continent and reprints could hardly be produced fast enough. His contribution to an awareness and interest in birds has been immense.

Today - 17 years on - the so-called "Sappi Green Edition" of Newman's (what a shame that Southern Book Publishers allowed one of South Africa's most environmentally-destructive and least bird-friendly industries to tarnish the name of the famed book!) remains the first choice field guide of the majority of birders in South Africa, despite the fact that the SASOL (here we go again!) Field Guide to Birds of Southern Africa by Sinclair, Hockey and Tarboton is favoured by most advanced birders.

It was against this background that the book under review arrived in my post box from Struik (Newman's new publishers). Newman's Birds by Colour is unashamedly targeted at beginners and on the face of it, it might appear that arranging the different species by colour is a good idea. After all, the colours of a particular bird are probably the first thing noted by most observers. A detailed perusal revealed a good many flaws in this approach, however, and I cannot help feeling that the book has the potential to actually inhibit the craft of bird identification rather than aid it! For one thing, only the more common species are featured (only one species of cisticola, for example) and these are the ones which most people get to grips with quite quickly. Anyone can flip through a field guide and pause at all the birds "with yellow colouring" if that was what they saw of a "bird that got away", but when it comes to birds with "rufous", "light brown" or "dark brown" colouring, it is a completely different matter, and these categories in the book are quite meaningless (the Cape Vulture, to take just one example, is certainly never "light brown"). Such brownish birds are invariably the ones which are difficult for beginners to identify.

Thus, the book will only help with the strikingly coloured or patterned birds but these are easily found in the field guides anyway. Perhaps a more important criticism, is that one of the first steps for any aspirant birder is to get to know the different bird families - it is not only vital to know whether you are looking at a thrush, a tit, or a starling, but this provides you with an understanding of their lifestyle and relationships. Truly the most interesting thing about birds is not what they are called, but how they go about their lives, and how so many species manage to co-exist in different environments. Knowing bird families is the foundation upon which this knowledge acquisition and appreciation is based, and this book attempts to circumvent that route in order to make a quick attempt at identification. Although the introduction states that the book is intended to augment the author's comprehensive field guide, I'm afraid that with its bright illustrations (the same as in the 1983 field guide) and attractive page design, many people will purchase it - and it only - in the hope that it will be enough for them to identify birds.

To end on a positive note, the author's introductory section - forty pages on bird anatomy, migration, feeding, courtship, nesting, and what one needs to go bird-watching - is good and provides a solid introduction to the hobby. This section would - in my opinion - be better placed at the beginning of the next edition of Newman's Field Guide to Birds of Southern Africa.

Posted: Birds by CC Africa, Date: 22 November 2006