This comprehensive guide to China’s diverse avifauna is an excellent regional manual for a part of the world that has yearned for a truly modern field guide. Its illustrations are useful, and its facing data and range maps complete the tome.  While it will not be a pocket dweller, anyone traveling to China should seriously consider taking it along.

With the revolution of world birding in the past half century, so much of our planet has become more and more accessible.  One of the intriguing exceptions has been China, a country that harbors so many of the world’s most beautiful and difficult species. Individual travel has always been tricky (I know, I’ve tried it four times), and even organized tours have been unusually constrained by the recent COVID pandemic. But now, China is again open for tourism, and more and more birders can enjoy the spectacle of a Reeves’s Pheasant, the oddity of a Przevalski’s Pinktail, or the adventure of the Xinjiang Ground-Jay.

In the meantime, birding—especially bird photography—has taken off in China. As a result, the birds are better known, and rare species are being lured to blinds or hides, where they can be easily observed and photographed.  In a place known for environmental abuses, such as the “Four Pests Campaign” which may have resulted in the killing of over a billion small songbirds, as well as rampant wildlife trafficking and the use of toxic chemicals, there have been recent advances.  Let’s hope that the surge in Chinese nature observation and an increase in overseas bird tourism will incentivize the authorities to be more serious about protecting the environment.

Birds of China is a translation of a book published in 2020 called The CNG Field Guide to the Birds of China, and there is no indication that this work has been updated from the 2020 edition, apart from the introduction. The authors Lui Yang and Chen Shuihua are both Chinese ornithologists. I purchased the Chinese language edition even though I do not read Chinese, as the illustrations were worth the cost.  In the age of eBird, Birds of the World, and Merlin, how does this new English translation stack up?

Birds of China is a big book; with 672 pages, 6.25 inches by 9.375 inches in size, and weighing more than 3.5 pounds, it is more at home in a suitcase than a daypack. The soft cover is quite flimsy and does not have the resilience of the Lynx Edition soft-cover field guides. On the positive side, the cover is festooned with a beautiful portrait of Temminck’s Tragopan. Inside, the book is full of useful information. Among the usual preliminary chapters are a “Key to the Plates,” an “Overview of Physical Geography and Bird Habitat Types,” a “Brief History of the Studies of Systematics,” “A Brief Guide to Bird-Watching,” “Bird Vocalizations,” “Bird Conservation,” “Bird Topography,” and a rather complete glossary. Some notable inclusions are 53—yes 53—images of “Shorebird Color-Flagging in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway,” a welcome section on “Ethics,” and some definitions not normally seen in field guides, including digiscoping, lifer, twitcher, and more.

There is one issue that needs to be addressed before we go any further.  In the “Key to the Plates,” the authors discuss the layout of species and provide range maps.  But the maps are quite small, and there is no elevational data, which is critical for some species. For example, the Nonggang Babbler’s range is barely visible, as it’s tucked into the border with Vietnam.

One thing that these small maps do not show is that China considers sections of neighboring countries’ territory as Chinese territory. One easy way to see this is the inclusion of the Bugun Liocichla, a bird that is completely restricted to India. Birds of China notes that the range of the Bugun Liocichla is “South Tibet.” Indeed, there is a separate section of the book on page 640 illustrating 15 species that are only found in “South Tibet.” Several of these birds are not even found in the mountainous Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which borders China, but instead they are located in the Indian state of Assam in the lowlands. Another example is the Slender-billed Babbler, which is almost exclusively limited to Assam; the book lists the species for “South Tibet.” On the other side of the Himalayas, the Western Tragopan is included in the book, although its habitat lies completely within the territory of India and Pakistan. I guess the inclusion of Taiwan is predictable (but not much comfort for the people of that island), but the other land grabs are more shocking. While I feel that birding should be non-political, it is hard to avoid what is clearly going on here. I certainly doubt that anyone in India will purchase this book.

The bread and butter of any field guide are the species accounts. Let’s look at how these stack up. One nice thing about the book is that the illustrations and species accounts are opposite. Most of the plates have a reasonable number of species, with three (pelicans) being the low end. Some of the raptor plates have multiple small images, for a total of two dozen on one plate. One odd plate is on page 307, where 12 paintings are on a single page that also includes two species accounts. The resulting images are quite small, with the White-bellied Erpornis just a bit over an inch long. Most of the depictions are decent renditions of the birds, with a few exceptions. I especially like the raptors and storks, which are particularly lifelike. I appreciated that the illustrations include notes pointing out the field marks.

The most important species accounts are those of species that are endemic or characteristic of China.  One such group are the parrotbills. These accounts are fairly good, though most of them have bills that are just a bit too small. Because several artists contributed to the guide, the plates are not uniform. Some of the babblers, for example on page 437, are painted in a style where the bodies appear rough.  On the other hand, the tits on page 336 are painted in a more traditional manner that I prefer. The only real problem that I have with the illustrations is that they are often dark. This tendency is especially evident in the leaf warblers and rosefinches.  For example, the Crimson-browed Finch is not nearly bright red enough.  Another example of the dark colors is the leaf warblers on plate 389.

Overall, this is a very useful book. Having purchased the Chinese-language version of the book, finally getting one with English text is refreshing. With the advent of a comprehensive China Merlin Bird Pack, however, the added value of this large book may be debatable. Some people prefer to hold a bird book in their hands rather than look at information on their phones, and for these people, this book will be welcomed.