Field Guides to Our Rescue

One of the inevitable parts of our travel kits are fieldto activities like wild life photography, hiking, eco-tourism
guides and NIMS guides. These tiny but not to beand guides to conservation, endangered species and
ignored pocket books give us quick knowledge aboutthreatened communities.
a particular species of plant or an animal that weFinding an unknown species name in a field guide does
seem to be interested in. It's generally used by touristsnot necessarily mean that every time you're flipping
to identify animals or plants that may look alike but arepages you slog to find the unknown animal or plant's
not closely related.description.
These small light weight books contain lot of valuableThese guides are arranged so methodically that each
information, photos and maps that can help us lead totime we want to get any information we get to the
our animal or plant we want to reach, their primarypoint right away-
habitats, their description, their food habits, migration etc.According to physical characteristics-
Just by flipping few pages we can unravel a whole lotFor instance a field guide to trees might group its
of animal secrets we've always been dying to find out.species according to whether leaves are attached to
Normally field guides are mostly dealing with plants andtrees singly, in pairs or in groups.
animals but other than this there are also field guidesAccording to what's related to what-
who help in identifying rocks, footprints, minerals, clouds,For instance bird field guides nearly always group
stars and planets and plenty of other things of interest.together birds that belong to the same order (duck
So if you are a nature lover then filed guides haveorder, owl order or perching bird order)
surely been a trip a part of your trips at some point orIt's totally up to you to choose which order you prefer
the other.the most. Generally for amateurs it's better to go with
Not only do we find conventional field guides for everya field guide according to physical traits and for
particular species of animals but we also haveprofessionals to choose field guides arranged
specialized field guides which include guides to habitatstaxonomically.
like deserts, coastal regions, forests, wetlands, guides