The long-awaited field guide version of the handbook volumes, with full accounts of nearly 2,000 species and more than 400 new bird paintings, for a total of 1,500 species illustrations. This is the definitive field guide to South American songbirds. With extensively updated color distribution maps and 160 additional illustrations of subspecies and females.

Ridgely and Tudor extracted and updated the essential identification information from The Birds of South America to create the Field Guide to the Songbirds of South America. This definitive guide is filled with indispensable features:

• 121 color plates that present Guy Tudor's magnificently detailed paintings of more than 1,500 species of songbirds, including more than 400 that were not illustrated in BOSA
• 160 additional color illustrations of subspecies and females
• Extensively updated color range maps for all of the species in the field guide, prepared by Robert S. Ridgely with technical assistance from Maria Allen and Terry Clarke, appear opposite the plates for each bird family
• Robert S. Ridgely's authoritative accounts of nearly 2,000 species that cover each bird's abundance, habitat, and range; elevational preference; taxonomic or nomenclatural changes; plumage description; general behavior and voice; and range beyond South America, if applicable