Birds Of The Indian Subcontinent 2nd Edition

This book is the second edition of the "Pocket Guide to the Birds of the Indian Subcontinent" and not the old handbook. Very nicely compiled and improved over the earlier edition. Major and useful improvements being, the text and distribution maps are placed opposite to the plates & the maps have been revised. It is almost a combo of the leading field guides for the subcontinent.
There are 226 plates. Most families are put on many plates with not more than 6-7 species on a single plate owing to big and good illustrations with actual names and not numbers below every species. For confusing families, there are certain plumage types are illustrated too. eg. fresh or worn plumage in Warblers. The text has been increased, compiled nicely, is concise and contains ID characters making it simple for beginners. It also mentions voice which is not so useful or accurate with difficult species but will be helpful. Authors have tried to follow recent changes in taxonomy and have listed proposed future splits also. The book covers around 1375 species, including a few pages dedicated to vagrants. Overall it is a good buy.
Service at flipkart is just great as always. Very good discount on the book and got it delivered very next day in Mumbai.
Amateur birdwatchers who plan to spend on a field guide this is currently the best buy at a reasonable price.

Definitely the choice for good Indian birds field guides for advances birds are very few, an this is among the best of them.

i) This book excels for the best illustrations it has. All the birds are illustrated 3-5 times with male,female , juveniles and sub - species.All the illustrations looks excellent.

ii) Identification notes are very useful, but call notes are often not missing.

iii) Distribution maps are good, but hard to locate and in-accurate, as they are often placed elsewhere. You need to flip the pages to and fro to get to the right map.

I strongly recommend this one, this will be very helpful at least as far as illustrations and identification notes goes.

I was torn between Kryz's book and this book. But the illustrations of Kryz's are not as good as this book has.

(Consider Kryz's book for excellent distribution maps(easily located) and call notes).
IMHO, a birder needs a field guide for illustrations than for anything else.
So as far as illustrations goes, this book is hard to beat.
I love this book.
Happy birding.

After purchasing a few similar books on this topic, I found this to be the most comprehensive- All 1295 Birds and all plates are in color. Well categorized and laid out. Its better than the others because of its evenly spread plates,and the trick being you can flip thru pages to stop at a page on which color, size or shape resembles what you have seen. From Ducks to owls this book as been a pleasure to kid and adults. It also makes a wonderful gift and more so to visitors to the subcontinent with an interest in ornithology.

For amateur birders, the new handbook edition of Grimmett, Inskipp and Inskipp is going to be a definitive companion to identifying birds in the field. Weighing slightly more than its predecessor,two things that make the tome a winner among the current crop of field guides to Indian birds is the replacement of the somber grey backgrounds with white backgrounds on the plates, bringing the identifying characteristics of the birds to the fore, and well, making the illustrations quite a feast for the eyes,which were previously lost in the monsoon grey plates. One doesn't have to fumble anymore to look at species' ranges across the country as the maps are positioned in the page opposite to the plates, with key identifying characteristics of each species including brief taxonomic notes on their former classification before Pamela Rassmussen's work changed it all.

The vagrants are neatly placed in an appendix with juxtaposed illustrations of the species.

The swallows plate seems slightly pixellated but the identifying characteristics are clear enough.

Another change over the first edition is the deletion of the signature scrawls of the artists from the bottom of the plates they illustrated and having clubbed their names on the front page along with the authors' names. Slightly unfortunate, this. Cause the signatures put a nice feeling of association with the respective artists.

That said, a neat little key to the plates generated and pasted on the backflap should make make this a gem for all birding trips. Happy Birding!

First of all, a big Thank You to Flipkart for making this book available and for propmt delivery! This book has been out of print for a while and the only other option was the US edition, which was five time costlier than this!
Grimmet & Inskipp has been one of the best field Guides for Birds of India. With this revised edition, it has become the best. Not only because it has the latest names, classifications and Taxonomy, but als because more detailed notes. Another big plus is the placement of the distribution maps on the same page as the species discrition. One finds this very useful, especiall in the field, where there turning pages to see the distribution is a pain.
The new edition has become thickeer than the First Edition, which is not a good thing for a birder. In the field, most serious birders carry apart from the mandatory Binoculars, field note books, spotting scope, tripod and some times camera also. This bulky book is difficult to carry.
I wish someone would take the pains to translate this into Hindi. We find most of the guides are unaware of the new names and classifications.