Birds of the Indonesian Archipelago: Greater Sundas and Wallacea
Book by Eaton, James A., Bas van Balen, Nick W. Brickle, and Frank E. Rheindt.
2nd ed. 2021. Lynx. 536p. Flexbound or hardcover. Variously listed at $51 - $57.
Only 4 years after the 1st edition, this new one deals with 1,456 species (628 of them endemics) and has 1,350 maps. The 2 different maps inside of the covers are key, and excellent, showing the hundreds of islands in this vast area, the most familiar of which is Borneo (the world’s 3rd largest island after Greenland and New Guinea), with separate ownerships of Malaysia (in part) and Brunei. Other entities include Sumatra, Java, and Bali (not to be confused with the mystical island in Rodger’s and Hammerstein’s celebrated musical ‘South Pacific).
Hundreds of islands comprise the region treated here. Hundreds. Many are part of “Wallacea”, the focus of this books’ vast eastern component, named in honor of Alfred Russel Wallace, whose “Wallace’s Line” sets off this area from the more westerly Indonesian Archipelago’s Greater Sundas.
Facing pages have excellent color paintings and detailed range maps on the right and text descriptions on the left, that deals with all a species’ morphs plus a general idea of its abundance, its vocalizations, and similar species.
Although obviously self-aggrandizing, nevertheless the book’s own wording gives a reliable description of its contents: “The second edition now encompasses over 2,800 illustrations, including some 325 additional new figures and nearly 500 alterations to the original artwork, supplemented by 1,350 maps of all regularly occurring species. … The book describes all 1,456 bird species known to occur in the region. … Together these represent over 13% of global bird diversity. Importantly, all subspecies are described in detail.”
Even thou mainland Malaysia and southern Thailand are not covered by this book, the range maps, helpfully, do include indications if any of the 1,456 species occur therein. Singapore is part of the great area treated by Eaton et al. in this fine book.
To give some idea of the richness of the avifauna here the birdlife includes: 83 pigeons, 26 drongos, 43 bulbuls, 25 pittas, 29 flowerpeckers, 13 hornbills, 45 owls (20 of them scops owls), 26 woodpeckers, 34 kingfishers, and 45 parrots (plus 5 cockatoos).
As with New Guinea, as recent publications such as this conspicuously emphasize, much remains to be discovered here, and future publications will no doubt include new species and many changes in distributions.
This fine book I can recommend wholeheartedly. It makes a (now) armchair traveler such as myself come close to salivating, even if it is a few years old.