Customer Reviews

The National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Reptiles and Amphibians

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book was written in 1979. The text and photographs were excellent, although the range maps were so small as to be useless, and the common names were the awkwardly academic types used in the first half of the last century. Supposedly, this book was updated in 1997. The text is still good, as are the photographs, but the common names still have not been corrected, the range maps are still too small, and over 70 new species that are now recognized from North America are missing from this book. This Audubon Guide is out-dated. Time to write a new one, with standard common names, modern taxonomy (drop the subspecies), and maybe some new photographs. Not recommended. Get the Peterson Guide. It may be a decade old, but its newer than this book.

My son became fascinated with reptiles and amphibians at around age 4. This book has helped us both tremendously to understand and identify creatures all around us. We have devoured books of all types at our local library and we keep coming back to this one. The pictures are fabulous and easy enough for a child to use. The text is informative and well presented. My son will be thrilled to find this book under the Christmas tree this year!

This guide is beset with problems, and there are better out there.

The range maps are so general as to be mostly useless. They're incredibly small, to the point where it's hard to discern where the lines on it are; is that snake's western range limit NM or AZ? You can't tell! The written descriptions of ranges are too vauge as well; they list eastern, western, southern and northern limits, but it's not like an animals range will make a nice little square; there are places within those boundaries where it does not occur. Maybe a lizards westernmost point is in, say Alamogordo, NM: it'll list that as it's westernmost point. but say, as it's range extends northward, it is restricted to a more easterly distribution; that won't be mentioned.

Furthermore, the guide is 25 years old. There have been massive taxonomic revisions since this was written; new species have been discovered, some species have been combined, some subspecies complexes split, etc. Ranges have also shifted since '79, due to development and climatic changes.

Also, the guide only deals with species level info. This is unnacceptable for some animals; L. getula (kingsnake) has some 7-8 subspecies, ranging from the mexican black to the desert to the eastern; these animals have markedly different apperances, habitat, ranges, and behaviors. But the guide doesn't deal with that; it list info for "L. getula" in general, without dividing it into subspecies information. This makes the guide worthless for Pituophis melanoleucus, Lampropeltis getula, Lampropeltis traingulum, and several other species which contain a wide range of different subspecies.

So what to do? Buy a good local field guide; they exist for most states- Degenhardt's Amphibians and Reptiles of New Mexico is execellent. Texas Snakes (Dixon) is good. Failing all else, most states maintain a listing of most native fauna online, usually whatever department deals with hunting and state parks will have a link to it. There is probably a good field guide for reptiles and amphibians of your state. If you need one for a bigger area, try Peterson's. They offer regional guides; one western and one eastern and central. They're a little more difficult to learn to use, but they're far more current, far more detailed, and once figured out, far more useful.

The photos which illustrate this book are organized in such a way that one does not have to be familiar with reptiles and amphibians to make resonably accurate field identifications. For instance, the photographs of striped snakes are grouped together so that you can easily check for that matches the animal you have found.

The text and range map section gives much valuable information as to habitat and behavior as well as breeding and the size of neonates as well as adults.

I have read this book cover to cover and while it has been a very useful resource, there are certain aspects of it that leave something to be desired. Since the taxonomy in this book has not really been updated since it was written, the classification in this book doesn't necessarily match up to the current thinking on many of the species listed. I would say that it is sufficent(if not great) for someone who simply wants to know what kind of frog or snake they've seen (the photographs are very useful), but if you want a more scientifically correct book, I would tend towards the peterson guide.

An excellent field guide (particularly in plastic cover-softback). Covers many USA species, but very light on Canadian species. Better than many I've seen though. Excellent color plates for accurate identification of species.

This book contains 657 full color pictures of over 470 species of reptiles and amphibians in North America. It covers from habitat locations to breeding and feeding. This is a must for any child or adult who is interested in our native animals.

This guide is the best to use for identification, for nearly half the book is made up of bright, clear pictures that enables precise identification. The guide also has sufficient taxonomy, although it is slightly outdated. If one desires range maps, I highly suggest the Peterson guide. The Audubon maps only show the basic region.

I have a soft spot for these Audubon guides because the first field guide I ever owned was an Audubon, and it got a lot of use. However, I currently use the Peterson Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians, and I have found that it is easier to use, and more descriptive than this one. There are two main reasons for this:
1) The Peterson guide has a brief description of each animal on the page facing the image of the animal and points out, sometimes with the aid of small arrows, the most useful identifying characteristics. Like the Audubon guide, it also has a page number you can flip to for more details about the life history etc.
2) The distribution maps in these Audubon guides are fairly small and vague, while the Peterson has a separate section for maps in the back that are much larger and more accurate. Of course it's impossible to say exactly what the range of almost any animal is, but I feel that this Audubon guide definitely has room for improvement. I do enjoy the photography, though; the Peterson uses illustrations, some of which are black and white.

The pictures are excellent, similar looking species are placed next to eachother so it is easier to tell them apart, the descriptions of every organism tell you everything there is to know about physical appearance, where they breed, what their voice sounds like (for frogs), their size range, and their eating habits. There is also usually a fact or two about the organism also ("this frog is often hunted in the south for its legs" "this frog is not as wary of humans as most other species" "biggest turtle species in the united states" "often hunted to be made into soup" etc. I've had this guide for three years, and it has helped me dozens of times to identify organisms that i have captured. The best of its kind.