Customer Reviews

Deserts (National Audubon Society Nature Guides)

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When I moved to Arizona from the Texas in 1988, I was given this guide as a gift. Now 12 years later the book is a lot more worn, but is still an indespensible part of my hiking gear. It is small in size and ruggedly bound, so is perfect for short and long hikes into the Arizona Desert. It provides a guide for plants (cacti, grasses, wildflowers, shrubs, trees) reptiles, amphibians (do not see much of these), insects, spiders, mamals, and birds. It has suscinct quarter to half page descriptions of each species (or genus)including a description, habitat, range, and interesting comments. The best part is that the color pictures are in a separate section, group by type above, with a reference to the page where a full description can be found. This is great when you are on the trail, see something and want to pull out the guide an quickly find a reference. You can either use its quick photo index (fruit hsape, bird shape) to go to a section of the photos, or more oftent go straight to the section of interest (i.e birds, etc) and quickly thumb through the pictures to find what you saw, then turn to the reference. It also has "readable: sections on each of the major US desert areas whihc you can read at leisure. The only two weak points I have found are the section on birds and references to non-desert parts of Arizona. Arizona is a major transit point for birds migrating north and south. Sometimes these "visitors" to Arizona are not listed. The Sonoran desert is also more than just flat land desert. It also incudes the "sky Island" mountains that spring up from the desert floor. This book provides a reference only so far up these "islands" and a second is really needed when hiking between the two.

Vol. 45, #12 ....On The Desert By David L. Eppele azcactus@primenet.com Bisbee, Arizona 10-27-97 Audubon Society Nature Guide "Deserts" I'm often asked to identify a tree, shrub, bug, bird or a Cactus by telephone. The call goes something like this: "David, I read your column On The Desert each week and I enjoy it. While we were hiking in the Pelloncillo mountains this weekend, I found a little fuzzy brown and white cactus that looks like a giant golf ball, covered with hooks. I wanted to take the little plant home, but George said that's against the law. Can you tell me what kind of cactus I found and where I can buy one like it?" The plant she described is probably a small fishhook cactus named Mammillaria microcarpa. Mammillaria come in two varieties...those with straight spines, set up like a pincushion and those with a lot of small spines covering the body of the plant and larger hooked spines emerging from the tubercles. All mammillaria have showy flowers, usually arranged in a circle around the top of the plant. There are many plant nurseries specializing in Cactus & Succulents. They grow these plants from seed, by the thousands. $3 to $4 is the current market value of a 2-year-old Cactus plant in a plastic pot. Other calls don't go so well...."What's the plant with yellow flowers that I see on the roadsides?" Since there are at least 20 plants with yellow flowers that can be found growing by the side of the road in our area, I need a lot more information than the caller can give me. This brings us to the subject of books that are used as field guides. There are bird books, rock books, mammal books, tree books and even buggy-books. Cacti of The Southwest, by Hubert Earle, is probably the best cactus field guide, but what about snakes or butterflies? The absolutely best all-around field guide that I can recommend to newcomers and old-timers alike is "Deserts." It's a field guide produced by the National Audubon Society (ISBN-0394-73139-5 paperback). It sells for $19.95 and is published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. of New York. The author is James A. MacMahon, of Utah State University. Of all the field guides I've ever used, "Deserts" is by far the best. Here's what you get for your hard-earned 20 bucks: A 638-page guide to just about everything that flies, lives, walks, crawls and grows on our deserts. There's an excellent introduction to the four major deserts and they even got the Chihuahua desert in the right place...sort of. It has two maps of the Chihuahua desert. The old one displays the traditional boundaries of the desert, while the new map reflects a much larger desert, with a finger of it extending into Arizona. There are actually three fingers of the Chihuahua desert that extend into Arizona. But hey, we can't have everything overnight! For years and years, all the books said the Chihuahua desert stopped at the New Mexico state line. I wondered why there were so many Chihuahuan desert plants hanging out here in Arizona. The answer is really quite simple. Plants don't read books. There's even a small portion of the Chihuahua desert in Sonora, Mexico. "Deserts" has species descriptions for Wildflowers, Mushrooms, Reptiles and Amphibians, Fishes, Trees, Shrubs, Cactus, Grasses, Insects, Spiders, Butterflies, Moths, Mammals and Birds. Now here's the bestest part: The guide is arranged in four parts-habitat essays, COLOR PLATES, species descriptions and appendices. There is easily enough information in this single book to replace a whole library of field guides! There are over 600 photographs of different plant and animal species. The species descriptions cover the most important information about a plant or animal, including description, the range, specific habitat and comments. The appendices include a bibliography, a glossary and a comprehensive index. "Deserts" is the book I recommend to all desert travelers. It will be a great Christmas gift for the whole family. "Deserts" is available at your favorite book store or on-line from the big bookstore in cyberspace, Amazon. Their address is www.amazon.com. © 1997, Arizona Cactus.

A must have book for anyone hiking in the desert and anyone even just interested in the desert. Packed full of info about "everything" you will find in the desert .

Don't be fooled by the negative review displayed here! This field guide is really great. I worked as a parks Natural Reasources employee, and part of my job was identifying every plant and animal I came across, if I could. Now, no one field guide will ever have everything you need, but good field guides contain many entries, good descriptions of likely habitats as well as the organism itself, a concentration on the plants and animals one is actually likely to find as opposed to those that are incredibly rare or not likely to be located in whatever ecosystem you bought the book for, and helpful hints with those species whose identification is notoriously difficult or easily confused. This book has it ALL, and more, such as the wide range of organisms featured, beautiful color plates, and supplementary information about deserts. If you find this book hard to use in the winter, it may be because plant identification in the winter is ALWAYS much harder than during flowering and growing seasons. This is because flowers are not only the number one organ used to identify flowering plants, they are also used extremely frequently to classify them into different species in the first place! If you want the most desert field guide for your dollar (or other monetary unit) this is definately your book.

A most comfortable-to-use guide with a great layout & excellent quality in illustrations. Too bad it is out-of-print. Waterproof covers and sturdy cloth backstrip, made for prolonged use, we love it.

The best one-volume guide to desert critters and flora. My top quality copy was printed in Japan and is well-bound, which is good because I use it all the time. Not every common species is included but most of the animals you encounter are easy to identify from the identification keys and splendid photography. The essays on each desert region are especially useful, and the flora & fauna lists are excellent.

Not many field guides for deserts out there. This one has great pictures.

First you'll want to browse the beutiful photos, then read through the naratives. The book is comprehensive, covering plants, trees, insects, frogs, birds, even mammals. The photo section has a photo, a drawing, common and latin names, and area found for each entry. Photos are great and not too small. The book has narratives for the entries plus lots of general information about each of America's deserts. Good reference for desert lovers.

This is one of the best books for locating and learning about the desert, their habitat and a picture of them.

I had a copy of this book a few years back, loaned it to someone, and never saw it again. It was like a bible to me. I started searching for another copy of it on Amazon, and lo and behold I found it! It had little use, and I got it for a great price. This made my year!