Book Review - A Field Guide to the Birds of Malaysia and Singapore

Hong Kong is ultimately boring so I can only get my 'lifers' through webinar, online birding or reading books. I got my copy of A Field Guide to the Birds of Malaysia and Singapore yesterday, written by Lim Kim Sheng, Yong Ding Li and Lim Kim Chuah who are famous birder in SE Asia. 

There are lots of field guides of SE Asia, especially for Borneo (I also pre-order the Lynx guide for Malaysia, which is coming very soon). I expect a field guide published in 2020 should be better than those in my bookshelf, but sadly this is not the case.

I am quite disappointed with this book and I don't think this is a good field guide for visiting non-beginners, but a fair illustrated checklist which covers both Singapore and Malaysia. The following are my personal thoughts:

A Field Guide to the Birds of Malaysia and Singapore - not a big book so easy to carry

Taxonomy is not 100% updated and consistent. This book contains newly split or described species like Swinhoe's & Hume's White-eye, Spectacled Flowerpecker, Charlotte's Bulbul; but some are only mentioned without illustration or more information like Cream-eyed Bulbul Pycnonotus pseudosimplex and Olive Bulbul Olive Bulbul Iole viridescens; some like the Purple Swamphen complex even remain unsplit. 

Charlotte's Bulbul, split from Buff-vented Bulbul, becoming a endemic species in Borneo which you cannot find in the older field guide

However, I think lots of new (or even old) field guide split the Purple Swamphen complex (at least include a taxonomy note), as Grey-headed Swamphen and Black-backed Swamphen here.

content of the 'Purple Swamphen'

Style of content & illustration description is not consistent, maybe we can see the difference in style of different authors? 

Giant Pitta - named by scientific name in plate

Crested Fireback (not split in this book) - named by common name or place in plate

The illustration I would say, horrible, and some are useless or even wrong for identification. 

Northern vs Brown Boobook

guess what's this pale-eyed bird - Zitting Cisticola

I cannot tell this is a Middendorff's Grasshopper Warbler without reading the content

and I never seen a Eastern-crowned Warbler like this

not to mention the pink legged Yellow-browed Warbler without fringes on tertials (but the tertials fringes are mentioned in the content part)

Illustration is bad doesn't mean the content can help separating easy-confusing species.

ID keys for separating confusing species are seldom mentioned in the content part. If there is, only a sentence or two like teaching you how to tell Bay from Maroon Woodpecker. Provided that the illustration is useless in ID.

When content and illustration cannot help, the mistake in numbering can guide you to the ultimate wrong ID.

number 2 and 4.....

The arrangement is poor too. The confusing species are not putting in the same plate.

I would expect Bridled and Sooty Tern on same plate

or Whiskered and White-winged Tern on same plate... and more examples....

Anyway, this is not a good field guide but still a fine way to learn more about birds of Malaysia and Singapore. I got my copy for around $200 HKD in https://www.bookdepository.com/