Deserts

Rating:
Summary: Best designed guide
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Best designed guide
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: The Audubon Society Nature Guides - Deserts
Review: 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 .

Rating:
Summary: The Audubon Society Nature Guides - Deserts
Review: 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 .

Rating:
Summary: The Audubon Society Nature Guides - Deserts
Review: 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 .

Rating:
Summary: A GREAT field guide!
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A GREAT field guide!
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent pictures and comprehensive
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Of limited use for identification of cacti, shrubs, grasses.
Review: I recently used this book as a field guide during a February visit to the Sonoran desert. I would have to rate the guide as poor for winter identification of cacti, shrubs and grasses. Only a limited number representative species were included and the small sketches were of little use unless I already knew what I was looking at.

Rating:
Summary: ID critters from the mug shot!
Review: 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.