{"id":26419,"date":"2009-04-29T20:06:37","date_gmt":"2009-04-29T20:06:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2009\/04\/29\/bird-and-mammal-field-guides-f\/"},"modified":"2009-04-29T20:06:37","modified_gmt":"2009-04-29T20:06:37","slug":"bird-and-mammal-field-guides-f","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/29\/bird-and-mammal-field-guides-f\/","title":{"rendered":"Bird and Mammal Field Guides for Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

As long as we are on the subject (this week) of field guides, I thought I’d go ahead and suggest what guides you might take if you happen to be planning a trip to Central, East or southern Africa1<\/sup><\/p>\n

But since we are doing Africa, we need to do mammals as well as birds. But let’s start with the birds.<\/p>\n

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The standard bird guide for southern Africa is Newman’s Birds of Southern Africa<\/a>\"\" and there was a time years ago that this was actually the best book for East and Central Africa as well, owing to a lack of other available field guides. Today, East Africa is well covered by the sometimes hard to findThe Birds of East Africa: Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi (Princeton Field Guides)<\/a>\"\".<\/p>\n

I don’t know of a good Central African field guide for birds (I’ve always used Newman’s, and it mostly worked. Plus you can just ask the Pygmy: “What the heck is that?” and they’ll tell you.) Another choice that covers a lot of ground but may be trying to cover too much ground, and that i have not used much is Birds of Africa South of the Sahara: A Comprehensive Illustrated Field Guide<\/a>\"\".<\/p>\n

For southern Africa in particular, there is a fairly new book of which I was skeptical at first, but that Amanda and Julia and I found ourselves relying on and using quite a bit last time we were there. This is Sasol Birds of Southern Africa<\/a>\"\".<\/p>\n

All of these books are drawing based, not photograph based. Which is the preferred field guide method anyway.<\/p>\n

For mammals, the one guide to rule them all is clearly, indubibly, and unequivocally, The Kingdon Pocket Guide to African Mammals (Princeton Pocket Guides)<\/a>\"\". Audubon has a photograph based guide that is pretty good, but, really, just get Kingdon.<\/p>\n

For old time’s sake, I’ll mention the book that Kingon replaced: Larger Mammals of Africa (Collins Field Guide Series)<\/a>\"\", also known as “Dorst and Dandelot” … this for years (in earlier editions) the classic that everyone used, and that was often hard to get. And no, you can’t borrow mine. The last three I loaned out are gone. Arms may have been broken.<\/p>\n

There are two books that you should look at if you are going to take a trip to East and Southern Africa, because they are excellent guides to the animals’ behavior, both written by my colleague Richard Estes: The Behavior Guide to African Mammals: Including Hoofed Mammals, Carnivores, Primates<\/a>\"\" and The Safari Companion: A Guide to Watching African Mammals Including Hoofed Mammals, Carnivores, and Primates<\/a>\"\". Have a look at both and pick one. Or both.<\/p>\n

And if you are in Ngorongoro Crater, and you see a Landrover off the track (where you are not supposed to be without a permit) and there is a guy in it making wildebeest noises, that’s Richard. Try to find him later in the day, buy him a beer, tell him I said hi, and get him to autograph his book!<\/p>\n

_______________________-<\/p>\n

1<\/sup>Notice the way that is written, with capitalization on Central and East but not southern. This is all South Africa’s fault, because it is a country called South Africa so that term cannot be used to refer to the southern part of Africa. And, by convention, ‘southern’ is not capitalized, yet it is a standard geographical region with specific countries in it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As long as we are on the subject (this week) of field guides, I thought I’d go ahead and suggest what guides you might take if you happen to be planning a trip to Central, East or southern Africa1 But since we are doing Africa, we need to do mammals as well as birds. But … Continue reading Bird and Mammal Field Guides for Africa<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[27,40,221,1417],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-6S7","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26419"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26419\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}