Birds of Southern India (Helm Field Guides)

Doesn't have distribution maps, but the text has a list of states where each species is found, with a code for whether it is common, winter visitor, etc. I found this good enough (with the brief habitat description) to narrow down what I was likely to be seeing on my trip to Kerala. Moreover, having the limited number of species in Southern India helped to narrow the search when trying to identify a bird, and made the book nice and light to carry in my luggage and in the field. Text is brief, numbers of pictures of each species less than in say Collins Birds of Europe. But both text and pictures are useful and high quality. The unconventional order of the species is extremely annoying, having got used to the usual system, and it doesn't even put things that look like each other close together, if that was supposed to be the idea. I also bought Birds of the Indian Subcontinent, which is a bigger, better, more up-to-date book with distribution maps and more detailed text, but weighs much more and contains many species not found in Southern India. I left it at home, but enjoyed looking things up in it when I got back.

I have bought this book to use with the Collins Handguide to Birds of the Indian Subcontinent for a visit to Tamil Nadu and Kerala.It certainly covers a more comprehensive number of Southern species than the Collins book but the information on each is not as good for habitats and distribution and the illustrations are not nearly as detailed and naturalistic.But I am on a holiday not a bird watching excursion, and I am confident that between the two I shall be able to enjoy all the birds that I see and have a good stab at identifying them.

I bought both southern and northern india, great publisher, nice quality info and illustrations

As it had all the birds we had seen on our India holiday, the new owner is delighted

It is a good book but the order of the birds within is going to take time to get used to, as they are not in the order that I would be used to in a Collins bird guide for example and may slow down identification for some. Still the birds are well illustrated and it is a handy small size for carrying around.

Well laid out and very informative

As good as it gets

well produced. Would be better with photos but is comprehensive and probably not all photos available. Probably nothing better out there