Abrahm
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A Field Guide to Reptiles & Amphibians of Eastern & Central North America
by Roger Conant (Author), Joseph T. Collins (Author), Isabelle Hunt Conant (Artist) (Illustrator), Tom R. Johnson (Artist) (Illustrator), Suzanne L. Collins (Photographer) (Series Editor)
If you are looking for a guide brimming with full color glossy photos of your favorite amphibians, this is not the book for you. This guide is quite useful for identifying species in the field that you are unfamiliar with.
Color plates of paintings are used to give visual clues to the identity of mystery herptiles. These paintings are taken from photographical originals. There are many benefits to the choice of paintings over photographs. The paintings allow many similar looking species to be placed near each other to make differences more prominent. The book goes one step farther by actually using little arrows to point out important details. Another benefit of this system is that with any set of paintings, the animal size is proportional. That is if one salamander is drawn twice is large as another than the real life salamander is twice as large.
Visual identification is also aided by a series of line drawings that help point out salient morphological details like nasolabial grooves, coastal grooves, scale patterns of snake, scutes on turtles and how to measure the length of various generic animals.
The Peterson guide also contains good descriptions of habitat, food preferences and other natural history data. . This can help you identify species or may even be used as captive care information. In fact the book actually possesses a captive care section. This section is quite basic but still useful. For those of you who can't live without color photographs, this is where you can find them. This field guide choose to include introduced species such as the iguana, Coqui frog and Cuban tree frog.
For those of you that enjoy hot reptiles there is a section on snake bites. It contains two basic pieces of information: don't get bit, and seek help immediately if you do. Pretty down to earth.
If you want lots of color photographs this isn't the book for you, check out the National Audobon Society Guide. Even with few color photographs, I feel this is the better of the two guides for easy identification.
Edit: This review is dedicated to Dawn for giving me something to review :happy:
by Roger Conant (Author), Joseph T. Collins (Author), Isabelle Hunt Conant (Artist) (Illustrator), Tom R. Johnson (Artist) (Illustrator), Suzanne L. Collins (Photographer) (Series Editor)
If you are looking for a guide brimming with full color glossy photos of your favorite amphibians, this is not the book for you. This guide is quite useful for identifying species in the field that you are unfamiliar with.
Color plates of paintings are used to give visual clues to the identity of mystery herptiles. These paintings are taken from photographical originals. There are many benefits to the choice of paintings over photographs. The paintings allow many similar looking species to be placed near each other to make differences more prominent. The book goes one step farther by actually using little arrows to point out important details. Another benefit of this system is that with any set of paintings, the animal size is proportional. That is if one salamander is drawn twice is large as another than the real life salamander is twice as large.
Visual identification is also aided by a series of line drawings that help point out salient morphological details like nasolabial grooves, coastal grooves, scale patterns of snake, scutes on turtles and how to measure the length of various generic animals.
The Peterson guide also contains good descriptions of habitat, food preferences and other natural history data. . This can help you identify species or may even be used as captive care information. In fact the book actually possesses a captive care section. This section is quite basic but still useful. For those of you who can't live without color photographs, this is where you can find them. This field guide choose to include introduced species such as the iguana, Coqui frog and Cuban tree frog.
For those of you that enjoy hot reptiles there is a section on snake bites. It contains two basic pieces of information: don't get bit, and seek help immediately if you do. Pretty down to earth.
If you want lots of color photographs this isn't the book for you, check out the National Audobon Society Guide. Even with few color photographs, I feel this is the better of the two guides for easy identification.
Edit: This review is dedicated to Dawn for giving me something to review :happy:
Your description of this book made me realize I needed it too! Maybe there is room for paintings as bearers of truth on my strange little planet. 
