Field Guide to Birds of the Middle East

The ultimate field guide to the birds of the Middle East, an indispensable companion for any traveller to the region

The Middle East – the region stretching from Cyprus and the Levant to Iran, including Turkey and the Arabian Peninsula, plus Socotra – has a wonderfully broad and diverse avifauna, featuring a host of wintering and passage migrants, enigmatic breeders, and even a few endemics that occur nowhere else.

This authoritative book covers more than 895 species recorded in the Middle East, including details of all regular visitors and breeding species, from the Purple Sunbird and Syrian Serin to the Northern Bald Ibis, Persian Shearwater and Brown Fish Owl. Featuring 180 stunning colour plates by three of the world’s leading bird illustrators, this practical guide also includes concise species accounts describing key identification features, status, range, habitat and voice with accurate distribution maps for each species.

Written by three leading lights in regional ornithology and conservation and now in its third edition, this field guide is an essential reference for any birder living in or visiting the Middle East.

Richard Porter’s name is synonymous with conservation in the Middle East. He has been involved with birds in the region since 1966, and is an adviser on bird conservation for BirdLife International. He is the author or co-author of several books on the Middle East and the groundbreaking Flight Identification of European Raptors.

AbdulRahman Al-Sirhan is a Kuwaiti birder, ornithologist and photographer. His passion for birds began at the age of 7, and he later set up a photography blog which featured his photos of birds in the region. AbdulRahman now leads guided bird tours in Kuwait and was also involved in the translation of the Helm Field Guide Birds of the Middle East into Arabic.

Oscar Campbell is a naturalist, bird conservationist and chemistry teacher. For more than a decade, he has been chairman of the Emirates Bird Records Committee. In 2013, he was awarded the Sheikh Mubarak bin Mohammed Prize for Natural History.