Field guides to our rescue

One of the inevitable parts of our travel kits are field guides. These tiny but not to be ignored pocket books give us quick knowledge about a particular species of plant or an animal that we seem to be interested in. It’s generally used by tourists to identify animals or plants that may look alike but are not closely related.

These small light weight books contain lot of valuable information, photos and maps that can help us lead to our animal or plant we want to reach, their primary habitats, their description, their food habits, migration etc. Just by flipping few pages we can unravel a whole lot of animal secrets we’ve always been dying to find out.

Normally field guides are mostly dealing with plants and animals but other than this there are also field guides who help in identifying rocks, footprints, minerals, clouds, stars and planets and plenty of other things of interest. So if you are a nature lover then filed guides have surely been a trip a part of your trips at some point or the other.

Not only do we find conventional field guides for every particular species of animals but we also have specialized field guides which include guides to habitats like deserts, coastal regions, forests, wetlands, guides to activities like wild life photography, hiking, eco-tourism and guides to conservation, endangered species and threatened communities.

Finding an unknown species name in a field guide does not necessarily mean that every time you’re flipping pages you slog to find the unknown animal or plant’s description.
These guides are arranged so methodically that each time we want to get any information we get to the point right away-

According to physical characteristics-
For instance a field guide to trees might group its species according to whether leaves are attached to trees singly, in pairs or in groups.

According to what’s related to what-
For instance bird field guides nearly always group together birds that belong to the same order (duck order, owl order or perching bird order)

It’s totally up to you to choose which order you prefer the most. Generally for amateurs it’s better to go with a filed guide according to physical traits and for professionals to choose field guides arranged taxonomically.

Online field guides:
The internet also has available to us a whole new face of field guides at click of a button with high-quality graphics and lot more interactivity compared to the old pocket book version but the only drawback it has is it cannot be carried to the field.