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Brazil: Amazon and Pantanal (Travellers Wildlife Guide)Snagging.org In association with Amazon.co.ukOnline Shop | Property Guides | Kitchen & Home | Garden Tools | Power Tools | Consumer Electronics Get the Snagging Checklist Here!  List Price: £18.99 Amazon.co.uk's Price: £18.04 You Save: £0.95 ( 5%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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Binding: PaperbackEAN: 9781905214044 ISBN: 1905214049 Label: Chastleton Travel Manufacturer: Chastleton Travel Number Of Pages: 512 Publication Date: July 01, 2005 Publisher: Chastleton Travel Studio: Chastleton Travel Related Items:
Average Rating:
 Rating:  - not up to the jobIt is surprising there are so few field guides for such an important country with key regions like the Pantanal. This book tries to be a reference book and field guide and fails with both. It would have been better split into two volumes as its pretty heavy to carry around. It does give some insight into the birds and animals of the region but is far too limited for the serious naturalist. Rating: - DisappointingMuch of the volume (over 50%) is taken up with lengthy introductions to the classification of the different orders of animals rather than majoring on species identification, leaving room for an even smaller coverage than might be expected. This area is so rich in wildlife that the choice of species covered will neccessarily have to be selective, but the decision to utilise a large part of the space for a natural history primer severly resticts its suitability as a field guide. Furthermore you should not expect anything of the 'Brief descriptions of the most frequently visited parks and reserves in the Amazon and Pantanal regions' - 4 pages on the Amazon and half a page on the Pantanal does not even give room to list all the different areas, let alone suggest which might might be the best to visit for wildlife viewing or give species lists and specialities such that a traveller might plan an itinerary round their interests. All in all a disappointing purchase which fails to serve the purpose of a good field guide for a holiday destination. Rating:  - Essential Background readingThe previous review is misleading. It simply is not possible to write a field guide to the Amazon and Pantana - to catalogue the birds alone would require hundreds of pages as there are well over a thousand species. What this book does, and does very well. Is to provide background bioloogical and ecological information on the two regions, together with plates of the more common species of flora, reptiles, amphibians, mammals and birds. There are no field guides on reptiles and amphibians that I know of, but any half way decent jungle lodge (of which there are sadly few in Brazil) should have a library of more specific birding guides. If not the best is the the Collins Birds of Southern South America and Antarctica (Pantanal) and the Birds of Colombia (Princeton Univ. Press) - a very weighty volume. For mammals Emmons's Neotropical Rainforest Mammals is the best - though it doesn't cover non-forest species. This is, however and excellent overview biological guide and is well worth getting. It is no more overly academic than a David Attenborough documentary and it doesn't insult its readership, many of whom are already fairly well informed about wildlife. It lacks only information on the better lodges and tour companies. See the Cadogan Amazon Guide (Alex & Gardenia Robinson) for these. Rating: - Not a Field GuideThis book is an academic treatise rather than a field guide. If you are a specialist wanting more knowledge, it may well be the book for you. What it is not is a pocket field guide for the general traveller visiting Brazil.  Try searching the Internet for "Brazil: Amazon and Pantanal (Travellers Wildlife Guide)" or Ebay for "Brazil: Amazon and Pantanal (Travellers Wildlife Guide)". You might also be interested in the following great products:
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