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 Location:  Home » North American Wildlife » General » Bird Tracks & Sign : A Guide to North American Species  
Bird Tracks & Sign : A Guide to North American Species
Bird Tracks & Sign : A Guide to North American Species
Authors: Mark Elbroch, Eleanor Marks, C. Diane Boretos
Publisher: Stackpole Books
Category: Book

List Price: $34.95
Buy New: $17.87
You Save: $17.08 (49%)



New (26) from $17.87

Avg. Customer Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars 10 reviews
Sales Rank: 100691

Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 464
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 1

ISBN: 0811726967
Dewey Decimal Number: 598.097
EAN: 9780811726962
ASIN: 0811726967

Publication Date: December 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Ships immediately! Perfect and New! 2001 Paperback.

Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 10
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5 out of 5 stars One of my main tracking books   September 12, 2008
When I first got this book I read it through like a novel . it is that interesting!! Then, as I used the book as a field guide I realized that birds make much more of a mess than we realize and that trackers can easily mistake bird sign for that of man or other animals without this knowledge. Lots of things that I thought were mystery disturbances in the woods were solved for me with this guide. No other bird book touches it for bird behavior.


5 out of 5 stars Excellent Book   September 24, 2005
This book is a much needed guide to bird sign and tracks. It complements Elbroch's guide to Animal sign. It is well written and informative.


5 out of 5 stars Expand Your Birder Skills With This   June 17, 2005
 2 out of 2 found this review helpful

I really got excited when I saw this reviewed in National Wildlife magazine. I often see bird tracks or even a nest when out walking but didn't know how to translate that into useful information. This book clues me in on the bird that matches those signs.
The author, a renowned tracker, spent 14 months, 12 hours a day studying bird tracks, scats, nests, feeding signs and roosts plus collected information from museums for this book.
Users of this guide may also want to try:
-Flattened Fauna: A Field Guide to Common Animals of Roads, Streeets and Highways
-Scats and Tracks of the Southeast (also guides for other areas)
-A Field Guide to Desert Holes
-A Key-Guide to Mammal Skulls and Lower Jaws
-That Gunk on Your Car (insects)
Bird lovers now have another tool to identify birds.



5 out of 5 stars Great gift for that serious birder   November 7, 2003
 11 out of 11 found this review helpful

This is a guide to identifying bird families or individual species by clues they leave behind of their presence. The title may appear, at first glance, to be a typo. It is not. As the authors explain on the first page: "Sign refers to all the possible signs of their passing: sign of feeding, gathering material for nesting, the nests or cavity holes themselves, pellets, droppings, feathers lost during molt, or kill sites."

This book appears to be packed with too much information for a beginner to digest. But its actually quite good for anyone who is interested in birds and would use such a book more than once or twice. The information is organized by types of sign - tracks, feathers, feeding signs, droppings, nests and roosts, etc., rather than by species. This allows you to read about whichever subject you're interested in and to take in the basics behind, say, interpreting signs of feeding, rather than getting bogged down by details specific to a certain species.

Due to the nature of the topic, the squeamish may not enjoy all the pictures. However, the pictures are certainly not as gruesome as they could have been.

In the introduction, one of the authors writes: "real tracking is bigger than one lifetime. Tracking, as our ancestors knew it, was a body of knowledge handed down from generation to generation. Each person added to this knowledge..." The authors clearly see themselves as a continuation if this process, referring to and giving credit to other excellent books, such a Rezendes' "Tracking and the Art of Seeing".

To my knowledge, this is the only book like this specific to birds. I feel this would be an excellent gift idea for that hard-to-buy-for bird watcher.

petervtamas@mail.com


5 out of 5 stars At Last! Something that actually contributes to the Field!   October 9, 2003
 3 out of 3 found this review helpful

Call me cynical but in the last twenty years I have seen field guide publishers recylce the same old info over and over again, just adding a new tabulature or color photos. The text is minimal and always leaves me wanting more.

Not so with this book! Mark and Eleanor have created something that goes well beyond any field guide currently on the market concerning birds! This stuff is new and never before seen except for experienced birders in the field. It is easy to use, fun to use and it will help anyone learn more about birds, their habits and sign. The photography is stunning as well.

I cannot over-recommend this book. Go get it, now!

Ricardo Sierra

Wildlife, nature and the Environment

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