Sunbirds: A Guide to the Sunbirds, Flowerpeckers, Spiderhunters and Sugarbirds of the World(Helm Identification Guides)

Sunbirds is the first book since the 19th Century to cover in detail all the world's sunbirds and spiderhunters - the Nectarinidae. It also includes the allied families of flowerpeckers and sugarbirds; a total of 176 species is described and illustrated. The book has been designed to help readers identify all of these species and also their various subspecies, the most distinctive of which are illustrated as well as described. Each species account provides a distribution map, a summary of identification criteria and a description of how the species differs from similar ones. The calls and songs, habitat, geographical distribution, status, movements, food (including a list of known food plants), habits, and breeding biology are also described. Finally, a full description of the species and salient features of each subspecies is given, together with measurements and references. Sunbirds not only aids identification, it provides a wealth of information on the ecology and behaviour of these birds. The authors have carried out extensive fieldwork in Asia and Africa. They have also studied skins, nests and eggs held by museums, analysed tape recordings and critically reviewed the vast amount of material contained in books and scientific journals. The superb plates would not have been possible without the exhaustive study of specimens which, together with the use of photographs of living birds, has resulted in the artist, Richard Allen, capturing the essence of the birds, their 'jizz', and accurately portraying the beautiful, bright, often iridescent, plumages of these spectacular families.

Table of Contents:
Systematic List Introduction Acknowledgements Style and Layout of the Species Accounts Topography Morphology - General - Tongues - Plumage, moult and other age-related characters - Karyology Relationships and Taxonomy - Possible undescribed species Behaviour - Food and foraging - Pollination and seed dispersal - Vocalisations - Courtship - Anting Breeding Distribution and Habitat Parasites - Nest parasites - Brood parasites - Endoparasites - Ectoparasites Mortality and Predators Physiology Migration and Other Movements Economic Important Conservation Colour Plates (32-128) Systematic Section (129-360) References Index

About the Author :
Robert A. Cheke is Professor of Tropical Zoology at the Natural Resources Institute of the University of Greenwich at its Medway Campus in Chatham. Before university, he qualified as a grade A bird ringer and worked as a field assistant at the British Trust for Ornithology. After graduating, he had various jobs in academia before taking up a post at the Centre for Overseas Pest Research, which was part of the UK's Ministry for Overseas Development and was later absorbed into the Natural Resources Institute. His work has taken him frequently to sub-Saharan Africa where he has been able to follow his passion for sunbirds. He is a specialist on the biology and control of onchocerciasis (river blindness) vectors, but he has also worked on a variety of topics in Africa including projects on Red-billed Quelea, locusts, grasshoppers and the effects of tsetse fly control on birds. Robert also regularly travels to China where he collaborates with mathematicians on a variety of subjects related to disease and pest control. He is the co-author of three books, and has published more than 200 scientific papers. He was awarded a DSc for his research in 2021. Clive F. Mann taught in schools in Africa, South-East Asia and England. During the course of extensive fieldwork into bird ecology carried out during long sojourns in the tropics, he studied the population dynamics, breeding cycles, zoogeography and migration of birds, and the subject of his PhD was the taxonomy of passerines. He was the author of numerous scientific papers in scientific journals and books including The Birds of Borneo and Cuckoos of the World. He served for many years on the Committee of the British Ornithologists' Club and was its chairman from 2001 to 2005. He was also a Trustee of the Trust for Avian Systematics (previously The Trust for Oriental Ornithology) for over 20 years. Clive died in 2022, shortly before the completion of his final book, Sunbirds of the World, co-authored with Robert A. Cheke. Richard Allen is one of the new generation of bird artists. He won the British Birds Bird Illustrator of the Year award in 1993 and, since then, his work has appeared in various books and journals. Sunbirds is the first book to be solely illustrated by him, and he also illustrated Birds of Paradise and Trogons.