Page 1 of 1

Field guides for Southern African wildlife: General

Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2010 12:35 am
by John54
Some personal advice on which wildlife guides to take along on your selfdrive safari: Part 1, the best allround guide.

There is an excellent and comprehensive field guide that covers lots of the wildlife in one easy book: "The wildlife of Southern Africa" edited by Vincent Carruthers*.
This valuable and popular guide features over 2000 carefully selected plants and animals, large and small, that are likely to be encountered during a visit to any part of the region. More than 1200 species are vividly illustrated and many more are identifiable from the text through reference to similar species.
Species include mammals, birds, plants, trees, reptiles, insects, spiders, freshwater fish, invertebrates and frogs. Each chapter has been written by a leading field expert. For the birdlife it covers around 600 of the 900 species in the area.
I would highly recommend this guide to all travellers, from first time visitors to experienced naturalists. It will be hard to find a more useful field guide!
book4.jpg
* This book is also available as software for your PDA, Iphone, Ipad and such.

Re: Field guides for Southern African wildlife: General

Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2010 6:57 am
by come-along.nl
Hi John,

Where can I get this software for my Smartphone (Android)? Do you have a link?

Cheers, Hans

Re: Field guides for Southern African wildlife: General

Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2010 7:38 pm
by John54
Hi Hans,

have a look at http://www.mydigitalearth.com/.
As you can see there are more interesting "e.guides" available for selfdrivers in Africa, e.g.the Sasol birds of southern Africa, the Kingdon pocket guide of African animals, tracks & signs and more..... These are the best guides in my opinion. Only the e.guide version of the book "Safari Companion" by Richard Estes is missing.
Unfortunately these are not yet available for the Adroid platform, but they promise "coming soon"....
Maybe I will buy me a new mini laptop with dual W7 and Android operating systems, such as the Acer D260.
These e.guides save a lot of bookweight.

Regards, John
SA-apps.jpg
prod-matrix.jpg

Re: Field guides for Southern African wildlife: General

Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 8:36 pm
by John54
Here is an update regarding availability of eguides from Mydigitalearth.com:
"We are busy with Android at the moment. We are also busy with Symbian and Blackberry. Hopefully everything will be available early next year."
Regards, John