Customer Reviews

A Field Guide to Mammals: North America north of Mexico (Peterson Field Guides)

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Peterson's field guide to mammals is one of my standard references as a mammology student. I constantly use the range maps,color identification plates, and animal descriptions. The book provides you with good identification characteristics indicated by arrows on the illustrations of each animal and a brief life history of every species north of the border. There are skull plates at the back of the book that are good for comparing different families but do not include every species and in some cases are poor positions to see defining attributes. The color plates for the most part have good illustrations but a few look hoaky like the Mountain Lion. Nevertheless, they all still provide good size comparisons and coloration of the animals. Consistant with other Peterson guides.

This is a good guide to be used in conjunction with the Kays and Wilson guide (a much more recent and complete book). It has not been updated in quite some time, but the information should not be dismissed. It works, but should not be your only mammal field guide. You will be disappointed if it is.

There's a new edition of this book (Peterson Field Guide to Mammals of North America: Fourth Edition (Peterson Field Guide Series)), and it's fantastic! This third edition, however, is terribly outdated and not at all worth buying anymore. Buy the 4th edition of the book, completely redone by Fiona Reid. The new one has new color plates, more complete and updated natural history info, and colored range maps interspersed within the species accounts, instead of at the back of the book. It's the book I require of my students in the Mammalogy lab I teach at a university.

I have bought many field guides and petersons are the easiest to use, my wife and kids love them and get plenty of use of them.