Birds of the Tropical Andes

This stunning book is the second to have been created by Owen Deutsch and Michael Parr. The first was Bringing Back the Birds (Braided River, 2019) which received little publicity in the UK but won several awards in the USA. Deutsch had a twenty-year career as a fashion photographer and in 2002 took up bird photography. His work is as good as any you will find anywhere. Parr may be familiar to some readers, having started out at BirdLife in 1989. He now heads up the American Bird Conservancy, which annually spends around $30m on bird conservation with a particular focus on Central and South America.

The focus of this beautiful book is the Andes, which make up the longest mountain range in the world, running almost 9000 km along the western edge of South America and overlapping seven countries along the way. For much of their range they are around 4000 m in height, but some peaks go to almost 7000 m. Not only are they stunning to look at, but they are home to some special birds, while dividing many species into western and eastern populations.

The book is organised into biogeographic chapters moving from west to east. So, it starts by exploring the Pacific Slope and Western Andes including the Chocó, Tumbesia and the Marañón valley. Moving across the Colombian Andes the specific habitats of the Páramo, the Polylepis forests, the altiplano and Puna. Having explored these high-altitude habitats, the book descends the east slope of the Andes into the cloud forest to Amazonia and the dry foothills.

Each chapter contains sections on the biogeography and cultural history, the bird highlights, conservation issues and opportunities for visitors. Owen Deutsch’s photographs are used to their fullest extent to show the birds at their best with many photos covering a full page in this large format book with landscape layout. It is a great combination of outstanding imagery against an often-stark message of urgent conservation concerns. While much of the area covered is protected already with the American Bird Conservancy leading the way to initiate programmes to secure fragile populations, it is against a background of often unchallenged destruction. A quarter of the Amazon is already highly degraded, and since the Millennium an area the size of France has been lost. Books like this probably have little impact on politicians whose interests are based on short-term goals, but for people who care about nature these images can only make them care even more – and that is what this book aims to do. It deserves to be another award-winner.