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

Barbara Triggs (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 6, 2005

This book contains hundreds of illustrations and is organized in an accessible format for easy identification of the visible traces left by Australian mammals in their passage. Triggs provides all the information needed to identify mammals anywhere in Australia, using only the tracks or other signs these animals leave behind.

This is an indispensable guide for bushwalkers, naturalists, students, zoologists, and other professionals -- in fact, it will appeal to anyone who ever wanted a better understanding of Australia's unique mammal fauna.

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

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Barbara Triggs has lived in the bush, among the mammals she writes about, since 1972. An authority on the identification of mammalian traces, she is the author of several natural history books. Mammal Tracks and Signs won the Whitley Award for the Best Field Guide in 1984.

Product Details

• Paperback: 348 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; Revised edition (January 6, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195550994
• ISBN-13: 978-0195550993
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,143,116 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!