field guides

Detailed accounts of wildlife encounters. Personal stories put you in the shoes of the tracker. Great pictures and examples of animals and their tracks. Easy to read, loaded with information. A must have for field work.

This book provides an excellent introduction to reading animal tracks. In the first chapter the author explains why we should try to understand the tracks around us in the forest, and what we might see. He then delves into the kinds of observations we need to make, such as trail widths and trail patterns and scat. The rest of the book is divided into chapters by animal family, including chapters for rodents, rabbits, weasels, dogs, cats, bears, and hoofed animals. There is also an extensive bibliography and index.

Each chapter is comprised of short articles about the specifics of tracking the individual animals that make up the family covered in the chapter. Rezendes provides a short informative description of the animal with a color photograph. The descriptions cover behavior, range, and diet. Rezendes also includes black and white photos of the animal's feet, both front and back. The next section of the article covers tracks and trail patterns, and it includes illustrations or diagrams, photographs, and typical trail width and stride measurements, as well as a lot of information to help you sort out this critter's tracks from all the others out there. He also includes short sections on signs, such as dens, food caches, kill sites, and scat, also with photographs or illustrations.

I purchased this book after moving out into the country because I wanted to identify the critters that visited at night leaving their tracks in the snow around our house. I found Rezendes' approach captivating and easy to understand, even as a beginner. Rezendes explains how tracks can tell us much more than just the identity of an animal- -through a careful study of tracks, you can determine how fast the animal was moving, whether it was browsing, being chased, or chasing another. This book is a highly informative reference; it's also a delightful read on a blustery winter afternoon.

This is a truly magnificent tracking book. The book has no pseudo-spiritual dribble about tracking ants across rocks or pressure points; it is full of useful information, and it is clear that the author is as genuine of an expert naturalist as they get. He shares an incredible wealth of information on how to examine and analyze the wilderness from a microcosmic level. The photography is outstanding and the descriptions of animal signs are excellent. Being a survival instructor, I have read many fine books on tracking animals and observing their signs, but I have never read one that I learned more from than this one.