Birds of Venezuela By Steven L. Hilty Princeton University Press, 2002. 878 pp. The brand new field guide to Venezuelan birds - will remain authoritative for many years to come. Read review here http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/7357.html

A Guide to the Birds of Venezuela By Rodolphe Meyer de Schauensee and William H. Phelps, Jr. Princeton niversity Press, 1978. 424 pp. One of the first field guides to a Latin American avifauna, this is still an indispensable volume. http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/427.html

Birding in Venezuela By Mary Lou Goodwin. Lynx Edicions, 2003. 332 pp. Now in its 5th edition, this is the essential guide to birding Venezuela. http://www.hbw.com/phtml/llibreLynx.phtml?codi=ONS0008

Venezuela, Paraíso de Aves By Carlos Ferraro Russo & Miguel Lentino Armitano Editores, 1992. 250 pp. 213 colour photographs. Cloth cover. A nice coffee-table book showing the splendour of the Venezuelan avifauna with superb photographs by Carlo Ferraro and text by ornithologist Miguel Lentino. Available in English, Spanish and German http://www.armitano.com/FaunaEntomology/Birds.html

Una guía de las aves de Venezuela
Por William H. Phelps, Jr y Rodolphe Meyer de Schauensee. Ex Libris, 1994. 498 pp.
La edición más reciente en español con un anexo de Miguel Lentino. Includes an appendix detailing new records since the 1978 English version.

Lista de las aves de Venezuela con su distribución
By William H. Phelps and William H. Phelps, Jr.
Passeriforrmes. Boletín de la Sociedad Venezolana de Ciencias Naturales 19: 1-317. 1958.
Passeriformes. Boletín de la Sociedad Venezolana de Ciencias Naturales 24: 1-479. 1963.
Published as issues of the Boletín but available as two volumes, these remain the bibles of Venezuelan bird distribution, despite their age.

Checklist of the Birds of Venezuela
By Neotropical Bird Club.
Neotropical Bird Club, 2003.
The brand new checklist of Venezuela's birds. The taxonomy follows Hilty's new field guide.
http://www.neotropicalbirdclub.org/club/sales.html

Audubon National Park Checklists
Various authors.
Venezuelan Audubon Society (SCAV).
Checklists are available for the following national parks: Archipiélago Los Roques, Canaima, Cinaruco-Capanaparo, Guatopo, Henri Pittier, Macarao, Morrocoy, Península de Paria, El Tamá, Yacambú. El Avila is completed and awaiting funding for publication. A State checklist for Delta Amacuro is also available.
http://www.audubondevenezuela.org/

Other site and area lists
Various authors and publishers.
Checklists have been produced for La Mucuy and Mucubají Areas of the Sierra Nevada National Park (Cuesta 1988), Campamento Camani, Amazonas (Prum & Kaplan n.d.), Hato El Cedral (Ascanio & Rodríguez 1995), Casa Maria, Carabobo (Boesman 1996), Campo Lindo, Falcón (Boesman 1997).Other published site lists include Sierra de Perijá (Viloria & Calchi 1993), Junglaven, Amazonas (Zimmer & Hilty 1997), Gran Sabana (Sharpe 2000, 2001).

MULTIMEDIA

Birds of Venezuela: photographs, sounds and distributions By Peter Boesman. Bird Songs International BV, 1999. The best CD-ROM covering Venezuela's birds. This pioneering effort contains a wealth of useful vocalisations and much else of interest. Read review here http://www.birdsongs.com/Venezuela/main.htm

200 Venezuelan Birds By Carlo Ferraro Ferraro Films. A CD-ROM comprising spectacular 10-second video footage for each of 200 Venezuelan bird species. http://www.ferrarofilms.net/productos.htm

TRAVEL GUIDES

Venezuela Traveler's Companion by Dominic Hamilton The Globle Pequot Press, 2000. Winner of the Benjamin Franklin Best Guidebook Award 2002. See VenezuelaVoyage.com website for more. Other guides include: Lonely Planet Venezuela - 2001 Footprint's Venezuela Handbook - 2002 Bradt Venezuela guide - 2003 Insight Venezuela - 2003

MAPS

Visitors usually find it easiest to purchase a map before arriving in Venezuela: maps are notoriously hard to locate here.

The best prepared and most useful national map is produced by the excellent map publishers, International Travel Maps:-

Kevin Healey. 2000. Venezuela. 1:1,750,000 scale. 3rd edition. International Travel Maps, Vancouver, Canada.
http://www.itmb.com/

For driving, the old Corpoven, Lagoven and Maraven maps often offer better resolution as they are produced at 1:1,000,000 scale. However, these maps are now old (I use a 1993 Corpoven edition) and were always difficult to find.

The Miro Pópic guide, Guía Vial de Venezuela, offers the best road maps nowadays (http://www.miropopic.com).

At a regional level, those interested in the tepuis will find the excellent new Mount Roraima map very helpful (also available in Spanish):-

Emilio Pérez & Adrian Warren. n.d. [2002]. Tepuis of Venezuela. No. 2: A traveller's reference guide-map of Mount Roraima. Emilio Pérez, Caracas, Venezuela.
http://www.lastrefuge.co.uk/tepuis/

Larger scale maps (down to 1:25,000 scale) are available for purchase on-line from the Instituto Geográfico de Venezuela Simón Bolívar, formerly Cartografía Nacional.
http://www.igvsb.gov.ve/

On-line thematic maps are to be found at:-
http://www.a-venezuela.com/mapas/index.shtml

Instituto Geográfico de Venezuela Simón Bolívar
http://www.mipunto.com/venezuelavirtual/mapas/index.html