| In any halfway decent
bookstore, and in almost every library, you can find good field guides. At the library's
computer terminal, just type in the key words "field guide" and look for titles
such as "A Field Guide to the Birds." In bookstores, of course field guides are
found in the nature section. Happily, field guides are used by so many people that usually their prices are surprisingly low -- low for books with so many illustrations and such specialized information. You should know about the following series of field guides: Audubon Society Field Guides, published by Alfred A. Knopf of New York, are comprehensive and attractive. Moreover, if only one field guide series is available in your bookstore, it'll probably be this series. Audubon guides distinguish themselves by illustrating species with color photographs, not with realistic hand paintings typical of most other guides. On the one hand, it's good to see real organisms in their native habitats but, on the other hand, when you're in the field wanting an identification fast, sometimes the Audubon guides' beautiful pictures just don't emphasize the field marks you need to see. Hand illustrated guides have the advantage of being able to position each organism so that critical field marks are clearly visible. It's a matter of taste whether you prefer the Audubon guides or another. Audubon produces different kinds of fieldguides with various technical levels. We'll begin with the bigginners' guides and work toward more complete and technical ones.
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The Peterson Field Guide Series, published by Houghton Mifflin Company of Boston, is the most comprehensive series using drawings and paintings (not photographs). They are not as glossy and colorful as the Audubon Series but, for fast, easy identifications, they are often superior, precisely because hand-drawn illustrations can highlight field marks. The series was established by the famed artist and naturalist Roger Tory Peterson. To review titles in The Peterson Field Guide Series available at Amazon.com, click here.
Golden Nature Guides, published by Golden Press of New York, are the best for rank beginners unsure they want to pay for more complete field guides. They are inexpensive little books of 160 pages or so, typically illustrating and describing only the most common species of the group being dealt with. For example, the comprehensive Manual of Cultivated Plants by L.H. Bailey describes 5,347 horticultural plants, while the Golden Guide called Exotic Plants, covering much the same territory, presents only 400. However, Golden Guides describe the basics for learning about the various groups of plants and animals, and they do a good job describing what's interesting about the common species. To review titles in The Golden Nature series available at Amazon.com, click here. Probably no group of organisms is better covered by field guides than the world of birds. You may enjoy looking over our special birding field-guide page. To review all kinds of nature books, click here. If you have special interests not covered by the above editions you may want to use the search forms below. For example, if your special interest is "beetles" and you want to see all the differente kinds of learning aids available (including flash cards, CDs, software, etc.), keep the top of the form saying "All Products" and type "beetles" into the lower blank. |
