Outdoor Books

Field guides, travel guides and the cruising guide on a chart table:

each is bought for a different kind of trip. The bird field guide is the one most birders own, a dense paperback of colour plates with a range map beside every species, carried along Pipeline Road or up into the Chiriquí highlands. Mammal guides and fold-outs travel with it, while a bird-finding guide tells you which trail to walk rather than what you are looking at. Lonely Planet and Moon travel guides add the Boquete trails to the buses and lodgings. Cruising guides belong to sailors: anchorage charts, piloting notes and a whole chapter on taking a yacht through the canal. Wildlife books for reading at home sit in animal books, and toucans for a child to colour in after a walk are in coloring books.

Country guide against regional guide for Panama’s birds:

the choice comes down to where else you go birding. Panama sits where the birdlife of two continents meets, with Central American species such as the resplendent quetzal in the western highlands and South American ones in Darién and Guna Yala. The Angehr and Dean field guide keeps to the country, fits a daypack and is the one local birding guides recommend. Vallely and Dyer’s guide runs from Belize to Panama with newer taxonomy, which suits anyone who also birds in Costa Rica, at the cost of a heavier book. The older Ridgely and Gwynne guide still sits on many shelves but has no range maps and predates a long run of species splits, so treat it as a reference rather than the book you carry.

Field guides lose value, cruising guides hold it:

a bird field guide for Panama costs around $35 to $60 new, the thicker regional guide at the top of that band, and a cruising guide for these coasts costs roughly twice as much. The cruising guide sailors use here has gone years without a new edition, so a clean, complete copy saves a crew the wait for one to be shipped in and gives up little against a new one. A field guide drops further after a season in a pack and a run of ticks, and a travel guide is worth next to nothing the moment a newer edition comes out. The bird-finding guide to Panama’s sites can be downloaded free from its publisher, so a printed copy fetches little.

Missing charts and loose plates in a second-hand guide:

these are what turn a fair price into a poor one. A field guide falls open where it was used most, at the hummingbirds, antbirds and flycatchers, and that is where the binding gives way and plates work loose, so turn through every one. Many birders tick species in the index or write dates in the margins: harmless to some buyers, a reason to offer less for others. On a fold-out the weak point is the crease, because once the laminate splits along a fold, water gets in. On a cruising guide, count the charts against its chart index, since a page torn out to take up to the cockpit is easy to miss and is the loss that matters most.

Guides left behind by canal crews and visiting birders:

much of the used supply comes from people moving on: a crew finished with the Caribbean side and heading through the canal for the Pacific, a birder at the end of a holiday in the Canal Area. When you list one, say which edition it is and photograph the cover, the spine and an open spread of plates or charts, and mention ticks, water marks or loose pages up front. A field guide offered together with a mammal guide and a fold-out makes a ready kit for someone planning a first trip. A crew collecting a cruising guide before sailing out to Guna Yala will want to turn every chart page, so pick a café table over a windy dock.