BOU CHECKLIST REVIEWS
 The
Birds of St Lucia
KEITH, A.R.
176 pages. BOU Checklist no. 15. Tring, Hertfordshire: British
Ornithologists’ Union, 1997.
£12.00 (UK & EC), £15.00, US$25.00 (rest of the world). ISBN
0-907446-19-1.
This is a useful review of our current knowledge of the avifauna of St
Lucia. Allan Keith provides a broad ornithological perspective, drawing upon
recent research from elsewhere in the region, and he has made the most of
the data available to him. One minor quibble is that I would like to have
seen the various alternative common names for species included in the
Systematic List because some of the AOU Checklist nomenclature is not widely
known in the region, where James Bond's Field Guide to the Birds of the West
Indies is still the most widely used handbook. All in all, however, I
thoroughly recommend this checklist to visitors to St Lucia and. Indeed, to
the region at large. St Lucia's avifauna remains comparatively little
investigated, and it is to be hoped that this compilation will encourage
ornithologists to fill many of the gaps in our knowledge.
• Extracts from a review by Peter G. H. Evans in Ibis 140 (4)
October 1998
The Birds of Togo
CHEKE. R. A. & WALSH J. F.
212 pages. BOU Checklist no. 14. Tring, Hertfordshire: British
Ornithologists’ Union, 1996.
£22.00 (UK & EC), £25.00, US$43.00 (rest of the world). ISBN
0-907446-18-3.
This is a further welcome addition to the BOU's stable of West African
checklists and contributes to filling the geographical gap between Ghana and
Nigeria, each already admirably served by previous BOU checklists (reviewed
in Ibis 124: 542, 130: 453).
The Checklist is valuable in
synthesizing the results of earlier collections and surveys, together with
unpublished data from private visits by ornithologists. This information is
greatly augmented by the authors' own numerous field observations, made
while working in Togo between 1972 and 1990. Probably more than any
ornithologists previously, they were able to travel extensively throughout
the country, often by helicopter into otherwise inaccessible places.
Like the most recent in series,
this latest volume is packaged in an attractive hardcover, with numerous
colour plates or habitat and bird photographs of a very high standard by the
two authors. It has earned its place between the Ghanaian and Nigerian
checklists on the bookshelf of every African ornithologist.
• Extracts from a review by Peter Jones in Ibis 139 (3) July 1997
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