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Brazil: Amazon And Pantanal (Travellers' Wildlife Guides)


by David L. Pearson, Les Beletsky

List Price: $27.95
Price: $20.40
You Save: $7.55 (27%)
Available: Usually ships in 24 hours
Sales Rank: 274393
Studio: Interlink
Binding: Paperback
Number Of Pages: 491
Publication Date: July 15, 2005
Publisher: Interlink


EDITORIAL REVIEWS

Book Description
The Brazilian Amazon region holds a very special place in the minds of the world's nature lovers as a vast wilderness of tropical forest splendor; and southern Brazil's Pantanal area, an immense wetland, has a well-deserved reputation for its tremendous wildlife-viewing opportunities. Ecotravellers to these regions want to experience tropical forests and other stunning habitats and catch glimpses of exotic wildlife: toucans and parrots, monkeys and anteaters, frogs and toads, crocodiles and snakes. In this book is all the information you need to find, identify, and learn about Brazil's magnificent animal and plant life.

--Identification and location information on the most frequently seen animals.

--Full-color illustrations of more than 500 of Brazil's most common insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, and fish-the species you are most likely to see.

--Up-to-date information on the ecology, behavior, and conservation of the animals.

--Information on Brazil's habitats and on the most common plants you will encounter.

--Brief descriptions of the most frequently visited parks and reserves in the Amazon and Pantanal regions.

Easy-to-carry, entertainingly written, beautifully illustrated - you will want to have this book as constant companion on your journey.



CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 4 reviews)

Good introductory wildlfe guidebook  
Given the length of this book, it is a superb guide to the wildlife and plants that one might see in the Amazon river basin. The discussion of the natural history of the various plants and animals is fascinating and extremely well written. I read the entire book at one sitting. It would have been nice if the plates were at the same place as the description but that would have had its drawbacks as well. The authors make it clear that the plants and animals discussed here are only the tip of the iceberg and only the most common or most interesting (like the bushmaster)but it is certainly a good start and a field guide that can easily be carried. The animals discussed start with the insects and go on up to mammals. The plates describe the animals and give the ranges. This is more than just a field guide because of the wonderful discussion of the biology of the fascinating creatures that live in the Amazon river basin. In fact, persons who expect to see just a listing of animals with plates of images will be disappointed. Those that want to know something about the natural history of the Amazon will be well pleased with this book.
March 11, 2008

Not a field guide, but a good read  
My wife bought this book for me for our recent trip to Brazil, including the Pantanal and southern Amazon. The book is excellent on some points, and severely lacking on others.

Since this book covers the gamut from insects to birds to reptiles to amphibians to mammals, I knew right from the start that it would have a very limited usefullness in terms of identifying individual species that we were seeing, and I was right. I was travelling with a couple of friends who are wildlife biologists. They too had the book. We all stopped carrying the book when we were out because it wasn't worth the weight in our packs. There are simply far too many species left out of this book for it to be useful as a field guide. With so many species, many of which look quite a bit alike, you will very rarely be certain that the animal you just saw is exactly the one in the book. For those who find it important to know exactly what you just saw, this book is not for you. If you can find it, Aves Brasiliera (All the Birds of Brazil) is a much better choice, IF you can find it. Our guide at the All the Birds of Brazil book, and it was far better, though obviously only covered a narrower topic than this book.

Now for the good. Before the trip, I read this book cover to cover, which is very unusual for me for "field guides". I found the book to be very well written, with good (though sometimes rather general, as I would expect) information about the ecology of the two regions, as well as general information about the species covered. Since Brazil contains many species that are vastly different than what I normally see in North America, I found the guide to be an excellent introduction for my trip, and though I only used it to identify individual species several times, I found that my detailed reading of it before the trip often useful in at least narrowing a bird down to type. So I could look at something and say, "Oh, that's a manakin of some kind." Beyond that, I relied on our EXCELLENT guide and his extensive knowledge or his birds of Brazil book.

To illustrate the above, this book contains (by quick count) plates and descriptions for 187 birds. During the nearly three weeks I was there, I saw 257 different species of birds, and I didn't see, and there are a lot of birds in the book that I didn't see. It's easy to do the math and figure out that the book is not good for (nor is it designed for) identification, per se.

So my recommendation: If you traveling to Brazil and don't already know a huge amount about the region, buy this book, read it before you go, maybe even take it with you as an evening reference, but for identifying individual species, you're better off using the knowledge of an experienced guide.

Oh, one other minor gripe. Despite the generally very high quality of the physical book itself, the humidity in Brazil appears to have accelerated the deterioration of the book. One would think that for a book designed to be taken to a wet climate, more care would have gone into making it withstand that climate. Maybe I just got a bad copy though.

So despite the short-comings of the book, which are largely by design, I give this book 4 stars. It is well done.
July 04, 2006

Brazil-Amazon  
This book attempts to cover the whole gamut of wildlife for the Amazon basin and Pananal. It can't do it; no book can. It did make an admirable attempt and as such is a great book for the tourist traveling to the area. On a recent trip north of Manaus, it covered 98% of the bird life. It is concise enough that the occaisional bird wathcer will be able to identify most birds. It is not quite as adequate for other species- fish are very superficial, as are reptiles. I would like to see these expanded. This is a terrific guide for the tourist- concise, adequately complete, and easy to use.
February 22, 2003

good reference for specific ecosystems  
I used this book for a recent trip to Brazil's Pantanal. The book is specific to only two geographic areas: The Pantanal and the Amazon, admittedly, Brazil's biggest natural draws. However, since the Pantanal and the Atlantic rainforest were my destinations, the book's usefulness was only partially utilized. Also, it is a heavy volume, and when considered with the other guidebooks I packed and used for cross-referencing, this book was by far the heftiest.

The book does fill a unique niche, that of ecology and natural history guide to these two unique wild places. No other book that is easily carried provides as much enjoyable natural history reading on the Amazon and Pantanal. The illustration plates are uniformly excellent, but it is not noted whether species occur outside of the Pantanal and Amazon. Many species do occur outside, as I quickly found out. Eliminating the rest of Brazil all together just seems a bit restricting. An average traveller to Brazil is most likely to make a stop in Rio de Janeiro, perhaps visit the easily accessible Parque National de Tijuca, and wonder if what they're seeing is that similar looking bird in their book.

Brazil is a big country, and no guidebook has yet to cover all its flora and fauna in one volume, in English, and travel-sized. This guidebook attempts to cover at least the animals and birds of Brazil's largest natural treasures, and succeeds for the most part. Given its quality of illustrations and plates, written descriptions of behavior, ecology and geography, this book is a good when used in conjunction with other bird and mammal guides.
July 30, 2002



SIMILAR PRODUCTS

Pantanal: South America's Wetland Jewel
by Russell A. Mittermeier, Monica Barcellos Harris, Christina G. Mittermeier, Jose Maria Cardosa Da Silva, Reinaldo Lourival, Gustavo A. B. Da Fonseca, Peter Seligmann
by Theo Allofs

Birds of Southern South America and Antarctica.
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by Gustavo Carrizo, Aldo A. Chiappe, Jorge R. Mata

Insight Guide Amazon Wildlife (Insight Guides Amazon Wildlife)
by Hans-Ulrich Bernard

Smithsonian Atlas of the Amazon
by Michael Goulding, Ronaldo Barthem, Efrem Jorge Gondim Ferreira

Birds of South America: Non-Passerines: Rheas to Woodpeckers (Princeton Illustrated Checklists)
by Francisco Erize, Maurice Rumboll
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