Birds of Tropical Asia CD-ROM, Sounds and Sights by Jelle Scharringa.
(a review I wrote for Australian Birding Magazine)

This fabulous resource is a very exciting addition to the ever-burgeoning catalogue of resources available for lovers of Asian birds. The statistics for this CD-ROM are impressive - 800 sound recordings of 477 species with more than 200 photographs of 160 species. The layout is simple and easy to use, the species list is extensive and exciting - 21 cuckoos, 15 pheasants & partridges, 20 owls, 17 barbets, 80 babblers (!), 55 warblers and so on. As far as I know it's the most extensive collection of sound recordings available for the area and the first available on CD-ROM. Birds of Tropical Asia covers the avifauna of an extensive area from Southern China to the Philippines, Indonesia to the Indian subcontinent. Not included are the Moluccas and southern Japan, both of which could be described as tropical Asia, but this is just semantics. One of my favourite features of the CD-ROM is the "Slides and Sounds Show" function, which allows the user to play a random selection of photos and sounds -this a fine learning tool.

Despite the above I do have a couple of criticisms that may or may not be considered fair or warranted! Given the medium a lot more information could have been provided to us. For example, the range of each species, additional data on subspecies and possibly a short verbal description of the call or song could easily have been incorporated into the design of the software. Some of the recordings are very short but one of the beauties of CD-ROMs is that you can easily click on the recording to replay it instantly over and over again. For many of the species a number of recordings are supplied but invariably they are from the same area often recorded very close together, temporally speaking. I would have liked the opportunity (especially with some of the more widespread species such as Red-wattled Lapwing) to hear recordings from a number of different areas. The main page itself is a list of the bird families included on the CD-ROM. In order to go to a species it is necessary to click on the family name then scroll down the list of species. I found this slightly inconvenient and perhaps a separate page containing a straight list that doesn't necessitate clicking on the group heading, as can be found on the publisher's web page, would be an informative and useful option. A search option does allow the user to find the English or scientific family or species name or part of a name very quickly, however. Rather disappointingly, it is not possible to search for every species in a certain region or country. The location where each recording was made is given and clicking on this brings up a map with the location marked and a brief description of habitat. Species calling in the background are also named - an excellent feature. The photos are generally of a very high standard - I have heard at least one criticism that there are too many birds pictured in the hand, personally I think this is not justified and enjoyed the close up studies of some pretty cryptic species. Lastly, it would have been great to see a bit more input from some of the excellent Asian sound recordists and photographers, all the credited recordists and photographers have European names.

I realise all these points assume far more time and resources than are no doubt available to the author and are on the whole quite pedantic. Nevertheless, they may be useful in the production of the 2nd edition! That said, I have no hesitation in recommending the product.

The website for Bird Songs International can be found at http://www.birdsongs.nl/. If you are thinking of purchasing Birds of Tropical Asia this page is a must, showing excellent examples of the layout of the screen and photographs, even a few sample sounds are provided.

Susan Myers