What do you think?
Rate this book
Tracks, Scats and Other Traces: A Field Guide to Australian Mammals
This book contains hundreds of illustrations and is organized in an accessible format for easy identification of the visible traces left by Australian mammals in their passage. Triggs provides all the information needed to identify mammals anywhere in Australia, using only the tracks or other signs these animals leave behind.
This is an indispensable guide for bushwalkers, naturalists, students, zoologists, and other professionals -- in fact, it will appeal to anyone who ever wanted a better understanding of Australia's unique mammal fauna.
This is an indispensable guide for bushwalkers, naturalists, students, zoologists, and other professionals -- in fact, it will appeal to anyone who ever wanted a better understanding of Australia's unique mammal fauna.
348 pages, Paperback
First published November 28, 1996
3 people are currently reading
44 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 15, 2024
Originally published in 1996, this minor masterpiece was heavily revived in 2004 and has been reprinted 17(!) times in the last two decades. If you're one of the few who doesn't already have this, have no doubts.
For anyone who spends time bushwalking or otherwise out in the great beyond. All notable Australian mammals are covered, from kangaroos and wombats to quolls and phascogales and fur seals. Triggs divides her book into four sections, examining first the tracks left behind by mammals, then scats, then visible traces (burrows, feeding stations scratching posts), and finally bones.
This is not an encyclopaedia, but a highly useful field guide (complete with its water-resistant cover). There are limitations to what even experts will find on a day in the bush, given the wily and discreet nature of most of our mammals, and Triggs provides the useful and the possible, rather than the speculative. She's not telling you how to measure and differentiate whales, for example!
The book had one of two formats to choose from. It could have gone for the standard 'field guide' where information is largely divided by species. Instead Triggs has decided to separate out information by type of discussion. Which does mean that one often has to flip between pages (often cross-referenced). For example a quoll's habitat range will be on one page, their scats might be a few pages later, their tracks thirty pages previously, their burrow fifty pages further on, and references to their size and skull elsewhere. This can be a little challenging at times. But I suspect it comes from a) the original publication of the book, at a time when it was more difficult to have photos and prints on the same page as chunks of text, and b) from the fact that - more often than not - in the field a user will be trying to determine between types of scat or skull, as opposed to considering the animal as a whole. So well worth it.
If you're heading out in the bush, get yourself a copy of this, a copy of The Field Guide to Mammals of Australia, and a decent bird guide, and you'll have all the tools you need.
Extremely useful, and a good educational tool.
For anyone who spends time bushwalking or otherwise out in the great beyond. All notable Australian mammals are covered, from kangaroos and wombats to quolls and phascogales and fur seals. Triggs divides her book into four sections, examining first the tracks left behind by mammals, then scats, then visible traces (burrows, feeding stations scratching posts), and finally bones.
This is not an encyclopaedia, but a highly useful field guide (complete with its water-resistant cover). There are limitations to what even experts will find on a day in the bush, given the wily and discreet nature of most of our mammals, and Triggs provides the useful and the possible, rather than the speculative. She's not telling you how to measure and differentiate whales, for example!
The book had one of two formats to choose from. It could have gone for the standard 'field guide' where information is largely divided by species. Instead Triggs has decided to separate out information by type of discussion. Which does mean that one often has to flip between pages (often cross-referenced). For example a quoll's habitat range will be on one page, their scats might be a few pages later, their tracks thirty pages previously, their burrow fifty pages further on, and references to their size and skull elsewhere. This can be a little challenging at times. But I suspect it comes from a) the original publication of the book, at a time when it was more difficult to have photos and prints on the same page as chunks of text, and b) from the fact that - more often than not - in the field a user will be trying to determine between types of scat or skull, as opposed to considering the animal as a whole. So well worth it.
If you're heading out in the bush, get yourself a copy of this, a copy of The Field Guide to Mammals of Australia, and a decent bird guide, and you'll have all the tools you need.
Extremely useful, and a good educational tool.
February 7, 2012
A must have field guide for the home library of any Australian who is interested in our native fauna. Ever want to know what pooped on your back deck, or walked across your garden bed?
Also for the specialist doing fauna surveys or assessment. Good to have in the backpack.
Also for the specialist doing fauna surveys or assessment. Good to have in the backpack.
June 9, 2012
Do you have a favourite Poo Book? I do, and this is it. Now I know what other animals live near me, apart from the ones that I've seen in the flesh.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews