With the publication of the landmark volumes The Birds of South America: The Oscine Passerines and The Birds of South America: The Suboscine Passerines, Robert S. Ridgely and Guy Tudor established themselves as the leading authorities on the songbirds of South America. Reviewers hailed the volumes as the essential reference works for professional ornithologists and avocational birders alike, and they remain the only volumes that provide full scientific coverage of the continent's passerines.

Recognizing the need for a more compact guide that birders can take into the field, Ridgely and Tudor have now 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