Great book, but where's the picture of the red footed booby?

From Planeta journal:

An impressive first edition, not as much a tourist's guidebook as a naturalist's handbook. Color illustrations document native birds, mammals and reptiles. The author provides a brief eco-history of the region as well as background on environmental threats and conservation. Excellent!

A layman needs a good guide when on tour of a new territory, whether that be a museum, a literary genre, or a country's heritage. In David Pearson's and Les Beletsky's 485 page ECUADOR and its GALAPAGOS ISLANDS, they present a book that is as good a guide as a layman could hope for, not just for exploring Ecuador or its Galapagos Islands, but for getting to know much of the fauna of Amazonian Latin America. The text is professionally written, yet down to earth and not infrequently humorous. The famous entomologist J. Henri Fabre once wrote, "Others again have reproached me with my style, which has not the solemnity, nay, better, the dryness of the schools. They fear lest a page that is read without fatigue should not always be the expression of the truth. Were I to take their word for it, we are profound only on condition of being obscure." This approach to scientific writing - being informative without being pedantic - allows writers like Pearson and Beletsky to fill the reader's heart with wonder while still often bringing a smile to his/her face.

With Ecuador being one of the most biologically diverse countries on earth, it is impossible to create a book that is both comprehensive and brief. The authors have gone for middle ground, covering the portion of Ecuadorian wildlife that is of interest and/or likely to be spotted by the ecotraveller to Ecuador. There are 96 color plates (with 5-6 animals illustrated on each one), several pages of color photographs, an excellent chapter - with maps - of Ecuador's National Parks and Bioreserves, a section on Ecuador's geography and habitats (e.g., Lowland Wet Forest, Mangrove and Coastal Vegetation) along with drawings illustrating several major plants in these regions, and 200 pages of animal descriptions under the headings 'Amphibians', 'Reptiles', 'Birds', 'Mammals', 'Insects & Other Arthropods', and 'Galapagos Wildlife'.

As an Ecuadorian resident, I have found this guide to be an excellent aid to identifying and understanding the natural history of the country. The book was both informative and fun to read, and I can highly recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about this wonderful area of the world.

I have just returned from those Enchanted Isles and found Beletsky's guide omnipresent, dog-eared and tightly clutched in the sea-salted hands of many a visitor. I am surprised that the Sea Lions and Blue Footed Boobies did not have their own copies!

This guide is a truly indispensible accessory for those fortunate enough to have visited those Islands of wonder and enchantment. It is also a great whetter of one's appetite! Other books have their strengths, but when push comes to shove, or in this case just going around..., one wants a thorough compliment to one's naturalist (to make all those notations when one gets back home, of course) and also a look into what is to come. Accurate and beautifully illustrated.

This book is a must for every Flordian and Florda visitor who wants to explore the "inside" of a fascinating state. The authors provide a short, but very interesting summary of the geography and geology of the state as well as of the biology of plants and animals and their habitat.
I personnally liked the section on "parks and reserves" which provides insider recommendation which are not found in any other Florida tourist guide. My family and I have explored several of the recommended sites and have truly found some of Florida's gems. The book is full of links to other interesting web-sites and provides telephone numbers for many information sites.
About 400 pages are dedicated to the identification of plants and animals in Florida. The plants and animals are classified as "native" and "non-native" ("native" and "introduced"), which I found very interesting. Further information about clasification, ecology and behavior and conservation status is provided for each organisms. The habitat and the region of occurance is clearly described.
This is the best book about Flroda's nature I ever came across and I would like to highly recommend this volume of the "Ecotraveller" to anyone coming to visit or live in Florida. - This book truly highlights the gems of wild Florida.

I took this book with me to Costa Rica so that I could spot and identify commonly-seen birds and wildlife there.

The first part of the book contains an overview about Eco-traveling that could have been summarized a bit more. The book conveniently places details about wildlife in the center of the book, and puts the illustrations in the back so that you can do faster lookups.

Although I appreciate the emphasis on Eco-travel, I found this book rather disappointing when used as a reference. Some of the birds I saw more than once were not listed at all. There are few illustrations of what the birds look like in flight and there is little about age- or gender-based differences in appearance. Also, although the wildlife coverage is fairly good for reptiles and amphibians, there is very little about marine or plant life.

I'm still relatively new to birding, but if I could do it again, I would have paid the additional cost and bought the Stiles and Skutch book.... If you're not a bird watcher and you're just looking for a basic 'wild life' identifier, I would suggest skipping the book, and instead, buying one of those laminated 'bird/wildlife identification' cards that you can find for about $10 in many of the visitor-oriented shops around Costa Rica.

This guide has got three sections: an introduction to the neotropical ecosystems, a description of families of animal, and a section with pictures, for purposes of identification.
The second section is for people who are willing to dig deeper into this stuff, the first section gives a good introduction into Casta Rica and it's ecology.
To shallow for professionals, to deep for absolute beginners (only the last section will appeal to them), but very good stuff for the informed layman!

This book provides a fascinating, well-written and often humorous overview of Costa Rican natural history as well as a detailed description of the most often seen wildlife. I cannot overstate how much this book enhanced my trip to Costa Rica and gave me a greater understanding of what I was seeing. It is not exhaustive, but unless you want to carry multiple, subject-specific books with you, this is the one to bring. It had information on virtually every bird and creature I saw there.

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.

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.

I like that this book because it actually rates hikes. I need an opinion when I am provided with such vast natural beauty to choose from as in Hawaii. He also tells you the best sights for spotting so apart from referencing wildlife, fauna and marine life as you come across you can seek it out. A good reference to use before and during your trip to the islands.

This is a natural history guide for someone who is really serious about gaining an in-depth understanding of Hawaii's natural environment, animals and plants. It's very complete and very well done (for the most part) and is the best one that I've seen about Hawai`i. Following the pattern of many other guidebooks, Beletsky's guide is divided into two sections. The first section (204 pages) is explanatory text while the second section (180 pages) consists of color drawings and photographs of Hawaii's flora and fauna.

The first half of the book is very comprehensive and is itself divided into basically two parts. Part "A" (6 chapters) covers ecotourism, Hawaii's natural history (including geography and climate), habitats, parks and preserves, getting around, environmental threats, conservation and how to use the book. Part "B" covers Hawaii's animals in just the right amount of detail (and in 6 more chapters). Each chapter explores a major animal group, such as "Amphibians and Reptiles," "Birds," "Mammals," etc. The chapters are well organized and they all include the same sections for each animal group. For example, the chapter on Mammals includes Mammals of Hawai`i, Characteristics of the Mammals, Family Profiles, and an "Environmental Close-up." Each of those sections then includes common subsections. It sounds tedious, but it actually works very well!

The second half of Beletsky's guide contains the color plates used for identifying all of the species described in the first half. They are beautifully done. Each animal has a brief description along with its names (common, Hawaiian and scientific), a habitat icon and a habitat description. There are also lots of interesting "factoids" in this guidebook.

One of the more interesting "environmental close-ups" is the one on spinner dolphins. They often travel with spotted dolphins and/or tuna in what is called a "mutualistic relationship" to protect themselves against sharks. Spinners feed during the night and spotteds feed during the day, so they trade off watching for sharks. They both like tuna schools around because the tuna are better than they are at sensing the presence of sharks; when the tuna take off, so do they!

While this is an excellent guidebook overall, I do have some complaints. The key to the habitat icons isn't anywhere near the color plates or in the index; it's way back on page 77 and very hard to find. Some of the sections are actually contributed by different people and I got tired of reading the same introductory comments about Hawaii's isolation and the evolution of endemic species over and over. The habitat pictures feel like they were just "thrown in" - they aren't captioned very well and they aren't matched to the habitat icons. The plant plates also feel "thrown in" - there isn't a matching chapter on plants in the first half of the book. Fixing those items would make it a "five out of five stars" book.

I purchased this book to take with me to the Manu Reserve in Peru. It offered a very nice overview of the wildlife of the area, though I did see quite a few birds, reptiles and mammals that were not included. The illustrations and narratives are well done.
I wish the section on snakes was larger and the guide just touched on plant life.
My biggest wish is that the insect section would be expanded. There are 1,000 kinds of butterfly in Manu alone, yet the guide hardly touched the subject.
An all inclusive guide to all the plants, insects and wildlife would be far from portable, so if you are looking for a travel guide this does its job nicely. Hopefully you can carry this and let your guide haul around the Birds of Ecuador and other more comprehensive guides.

I can appreciate the author's intent - to create a more comprehensive guide to the wildlife of a region that is sorely lacking in accesible information. It is a pioneering effort, and I am grateful that such guides are being attempted. But after reviewing the bird plates I became quite upset - this guide will lead to many misidentifications due to innacurate portrayals and information, as well as omissions. While I can understand the impossibility of covering all the living species in a large and diverse region, it would be nice if the ones chosen were depicted accurately, and reference was made to similar species occuring within other parts of the covered range. For just one example, plate 45 shows four species of Motmot as being the ame size and shape, when the Tody Motmot is HALF the size (and a very different shape) of the others. While this is indicated (in small print), anyone relying on the pictures could easily become confused. Beletsky list Howell's excellent "Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America" in his references, but he clearly should have been paying more attention! As to omissions, if an abbreviated list is desired in the interest of keeping this book accesible for the more casual enthusiast, it would have been far better to at least focus on the species most likely to be encountered. While some rarely seen species are included, many quite visible and common birds are left out! And how could Beletsky leave out the Boat-billed Heron? Not only is this species an icon amongst Mexican birds, but it is a favorite species for boat tour operators on both coasts to find for visitors! After seeing what the bird plates are like, how could I ever feel positive about identifying other wildlife using this book?
On the positive side, I will reiterate that I am glad that such books are being written. There is often no information available (in practical form) on tropical reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates, etc. But I hope guides like this will get a whole lot better! Skimping on information for portability is not the answer. Accuracy should be far more important. In Beletsky's favor are the habitat photos, and coverage of ecotourism and conservation issues.

Simply, a terrific wildlife guide and the best of its kind for Mexico. Chapters provided detailed information (with photos!) of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals found in southern Mexico. Recommeneded for any serious student of biology or dedicated eco traveler.