Tracks, Scats and Other Traces: A Field Guide to Australian Mammals [Paperback]

Barbara Triggs (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 28, 1996

This book, an enlarged and updated successor to Mammal Tracks and Signs: A Field guide for South-Eastern Australia (winner of the Whitley Award for the Best Field Guide in 1984), covers all Australian states and territories, contains hundreds of new illustrations and extensive new text, and is formatted for easy identification of the visible traces left by mammals in their passage. It is divided into four forms of classification: drawings of 'perfect' tracks matched with photographs of the same tracks in sand or mud; color illustrations depicting scats of 128 species of mammals--with a distribution maps and habitat information--along with pellets and scats of birds, reptiles and invertebrates; detailed descriptions and over 70 color photographs of the distinctive traces of mammals at shelters and feeding sites; and 40 full page plates of skulls, lower jaws, humeri and femurs covering the more commonly found species, plus a detailed guide covering all mammal groups. Naturalists are becoming increasingly aware of the value of the indirect methods of finding and identifying mammals. This handbook of detection will be an essential companion to be kept in the pocket, backpack or car for constant ready reference.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Informed coverage by an author who really knows what she is talking about. . . . For anyone interested in Australian mammals, this is an invaluable book; whether that interest is confined to enhancing the enjoyment of bushwalking or whether it is more professionally directed it will be a welcome text for naturalists and ecologists alike."--Journal of Animal Ecology

"Indispensable equipment for bushwalkers, naturalists, students, zoologists and other professionals, in fact, for anyone wanting a better understanding of Australia's unique mammal fauna." --Ethology, Ecology & Evolution

About the Author

Barbara Triggs has lived in the bush, amongst the mammals she writes about, since 1972. An authority on the identification of mammalian traces, particularly hair and scats, she also studies the animals themselves and is the author of several natural history books, including The Wombat: Common Wombats in Australia.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 2 edition (November 28, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195536436
• ISBN-13: 978-0195536430
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,725,882 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Useful field guide., January 13, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Tracks, Scats and Other Traces: A Field Guide to Australian Mammals (Paperback)

This is an extremely useful field guide for lovers of wildlife in Australia. Many animals are nocturnal and leave only small clues to their presence. With this guide I have been able to sleuth out a number of previously unobserved species. The descriptions of tracks, scats and traces are clear and thorough and there are many useful photographs, illustrations and distribution maps.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Book with Hard to Find Info, March 3, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Tracks, Scats and Other Traces: A Field Guide to Australian Mammals (Paperback)

This is a fantastic book. All very useful information, hard to find all in one place. I don't know of any similar work for the general reader.

Nothing compares to being able to know that an animal you rarely or never see actually lives in an area and has passed by recently. The descriptions of footprints and the drawings were clear enough that I was able to determine an exact species from macropod (from a good set of prints) on the basis on the footprint alone. This also matched up with the expected distribution for this species (also shown in the book, next to its scat picture). I haven't come across any random bones in the bush yet to be able to identify from the descriptions given in the book, but the section on bones is as clear and concise as the rest of the book.

The coverage of other sorts of signs (scraping, scratch marks, etc) is also quite handy and clear.

There are some improvements I would like to see in any future editions. I would like to see a scale marker in *every* single scat picture. This would be preferable to taking all the photos at the same scale (which they mostly seem to be) because at that scale the droppings of the bats become very hard to distinguish. The *ideal* I think would be to have all the pictures at 'life size' from a particular distance, with a zoomed-in picture with a scale marker.

*All* the pictures should be in colour (except the skeletal pictures). Each scat should have a description, and a picture of an unbroken and a broken pellet. Some are like this, but not all. The description for the scat could describe the changes in the scat throughout the year as the diet of the animal changes. This could at least be done for all the common and well-known animals.

The other problem with the scat pictures is that they are of varying ages. The colour changes greatly with age (very fresh = very green, aging to various shades of brown). Some of the pictures are of semi-fresh scats, and the others are quite old.

However, these issues do not detract from the usefulness or quality of this edition - I just hope to see some extra features in any future editions!

It is a massive task to collect all this information and pictures, and even though this book is the only one of its kind that I know of for general readers, I am sure that if there were other books on the same topic, this would still stand out as a high quality and invaluable resource for australian naturalists!