Nature Books Australia

Recommended books for naturalists

Jade Craven

Book Review: A Naturalist’s Guide to the Mammals of Australia

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Australia is well known for its diverse range of mammals. Some species – such as the koala and kangaroo – have captured the imagination of both tourists and locals. Despite the notoriety, many people would underestimate the sheer diversity of mammals in Australia.

This is understandable. The behavior and habitat requirements of many species mean that most people don’t get the opportunity to observe them.

A Naturalist Guide To Mammals of Australia aims to change that. The beginner-friendly field guide provides an overview of 300 species of mammals in Australia.

How Is The Guide Structured?

Like other guides in the series, the introductory content is brief. The section introducing modern-day mammals is given just two and a half pages. Half a page is allocated to the key features and measurements. This information should be enough for most readers but will leave many naturalists wanting more.

The remainder of the guide is dedicated to the species profiles. A diverse range of species are featured. They include:

  • dasyurids
  • bats
  • mice and rats
  • marine mammals.

Two species are featured on each page. The species profiles feature information on the species physical appearance, distribution, habitat and habits. In most cases, extra notes are given. Most profiles feature just the one image.

I found that this information was enough for an introductory guide. I’m often critical of the books in the series, however the brevity suited this guide. It is allows for beginners to learn more about Australian mammals without overwhelming them.

The Guide Should Be Used For Inspiration, Not Identification.

Enough information is given to help people make basic identifications. However, some readers would struggle with the species they are unfamiliar with. This is partially due to the minimal information about telling the types of mammals apart. Comparisons with similar species are made in the notes section.

Despite that, I’m a huge fan of this guide. It is great for providing an overview of mammals that most people wouldn’t be aware of. It helps beginners discover the types of mammals that can be found in locations close to their home. It gives readers a greater appreciate of wildlife that often goes unseen.

Do I Recommend It?

Yes.

This is a great guide to introduce you to the diversity of Australian mammals. It will help you figure out if mammal watching is something you want to pursue before you buy the more expensive guides.

It can also be useful for creating a bucket list. It is so easy to underestimate the mammals that you don’t see if your favourite locations due to their being nocturnal.

It is a useful book for both children and adults.

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Garden Pests, Diseases & Good Bugs

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There are many useful books to help amateurs identify insects. Most of these focus on identifying the insect and helping the reader understand how they interact with the environment.

Garden Pests, Diseases & Good Bugs takes a different approach. It just focuses on the insects that you will find in your garden. The goal is to help you figure out which insects are beneficial and which insects will cause issues. This can help you find natural, non-toxic ways to control the pest species.

This book is essential reading if you are a gardener.

How Is The Book Organized?

The book is organized into four main parts:

  • Part A: Prelude
  • Part B: Beneficial Organisms
  • Part C: Pests
  • Part D: Diseases, Disorders and Deficiencies

Each part has a brief introduction before diving straight into the insect descriptions. This brevity is useful: it doesn’t overwhelm the reader but still gives them enough information to understand the featured insects. Each part is broken down into multiple chapters organized by themes such as parasites or pollinators.

The species profiles are organized so that one page has photos and one page has text. Unlike other books, a species doesn’t get it’s own dedicated page. This means that there can be multiple species on the one page. In some cases, a species will be introduced on one page but the pictures aren’t provided until the next page.

This can make it difficult for those flipping through the book to find an image of the insect. It does mean extra work, but it’s worth it.

Part B: Beneficial Organisms

This section of the book is dedicated to the good insects in your garden. In these chapters, Denis talks about:

  • what the insect looks like
  • when and where you are likely to find them
  • what pest they target

The chapters are organized into the types of good species. There are individual chapters on parasites, predatory insects, other predators, pollinators and recyclers. The other predator chapter features non-insects such as birds, arachnids and reptiles. The images show the insect at multiple points in it’s life cycle.

I would have liked there to have been more information about attracting the beneficial insects to your garden. However, the book was already pretty lengthy at 464 pages. I use this section to help me identify a specific insect so I can do additional research.

Part C

This section forms the bulk of the book. There are over 200 pages just dedicated to pest species.

The species profiles feature the similar information to those featured in the beneficial organisms section.  He also covers:

  • the plants the insects attack
  • symptoms of infection
  • how to control them

The accompanying photos were very useful. Images are provided of species at multiple points in its life cycle. Some images also showed the physical evidence that a species had targeted that plant.

The information in each chapter is broken down according to the type of species such as beetle and caterpillar. The specificity of the species profiles does vary. Multiple species are featured. In some cases, the chapter features the specific species. In others, the feature only covers the type of species such as a cup both. This can make it difficult to identify exactly what you’ve found, especially if the specimen doesn’t look like the featured images. However, this guide should help helping you narrow it down to family or genus.

This part was incredibly useful. I got the most out of this section by flipping through to find image of an insect or symptom that looked familiar.

Part D: Diseases, Disorders and Deficiencies

It is important that you correctly identify what is impacting on a plants health so you can take the right action to treat it. In many cases, this is caused by the insects. In others, however, it is caused by tinier lifeforms or something different. This section helps readers identify what is causing any issues.

There are four chapters in this part:

  • Bacterial Diseases
  • Fungal diseases
  • Viruses
  • Other plant problems

The fungal disease chapter is the largest at over 50 pages.. For each issue, Crawford discusses the symptoms, the plants on which they occur, the conditions that favour them. He shares about how to prevent and control the disease. He also writes about things that may be confused with a plant disease, such as nutritional deficiencies. These chapters are accompanied with images that show how a diseases presentation may vary.

This part may not be relevant for those who are focusing on identifying bug species, however it is relevant to those who are trying to increase the health of their garden.

Do I recommend it?

This book is highly recommended to any gardener. It will help you learn so much about your garden and help you create a healthier ecosystem.

I wouldn’t recommend it for beginner naturalists. Backyard Insects would be a much more useful book.

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Book Review: Birds Of Prey Of Australia

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I love birds of prey. But, even with my plethora of field guides, I struggle. I can be comparing images, sometimes from multiple guides, and still get confused. It got to the point where I needed a guide dedicated to just birds of prey.

Birds Of Prey Of Australia is a mixture of field guide and handbook.. It is separated into two parts: one focusing just on identification and one dedicated to exploring the behaviour and characteristics of a species in more detail.

It is one of the best guides I own and one that I would recommend to any bird enthusiast.

Part 1: The field guide

The first part is dedicated to helping readers identify the 26 different species of birds of prey. Most of this part is organized into species descriptions. There are smaller sections at the end dedicated to vagrants and difficult pairs.

Most species descriptions take up just two pages, except for white-bellied sea eagle which has four. These descriptions are split equally between text and graphics.

The images vary between 4 and 16 per page, depending on the amount of variations within a species. The images show:

  • how different morphs, gender and age can influence the birds physical appearance.
  • examples of worn plumage
  • what the bird looks like in moult.
  • what the birds look like from different perspectives including in flight, from above, from below and perched.

The images are accompanied by detailed physical descriptions. There is information on the adults, juveniles and chicks. The final paragraph is dedicated the explaining how to tell a species apart from similar ones.

I love this. There are so many subtleties when it comes variations in a birds appearance; much more than most field guides can cover. Previously, I’d learn this information in the field when with a more experienced birder. This guide lessons the learning curve.

Difficult species: pairs

This section is a highlight and something that I will be returning to often. The section features 38 pages of comparisons between different species.

The first 12 pages are illustrations showing the visual differences between species. These illustrations are split in the middle of the page and show how the underwings compare to similar species. In some cases, the illustrations show the differences between different morphs and adult/juvenile.

This section alone is worth the cost of the guide.

Part 2: Handbook

The handbook section is organized differently to Part 1. The content focuses on the behaviour and issues facing each species. Debus allocates two pages to each species and writes about the species distribution, food and hunting, breeding and threats and conservation.

I appreciated this content being kept separate from the part focused on identification. It helps me avoid being overwhelmed when trying to identify a species and allows me to learn more at my own pace.

Do I recommend it?

I highly recommend this book.

I used to sit with multiple guides in front of me and still have difficulty identifying a species. The difficult species pages are so useful that they are worth the entire cost of the book.

The guide also had just enough information. I’m able to dive in and learn more about the species that intrigue me without getting overwhelmed. Overwhelm has been a huge issue for me so this was very much appreciated.

I recommend it to people at all stages of their birdwatching journey.

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Book Review: Shrimps, prawns and lobsters

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Shrimps are a common feature of most Victorian rockpools. Most species, however, aren’t that easy to identify. They move quickly and can have translucent features. This guide aims to help amateur naturalists and beachcombers identify the common species of shrimps, prawns and lobsters.

How Is The Information Structured?

There are 32 pages dedicated to the introductory content, with the remaining 80 dedicated to species profiles. This allows the reader to get a solid understanding of the basics without getting overwhelmed. The introduction covers taxonomy, habitats and ecology. The tone is very beginner-friendly, although it is likely that you will need to return to these chapters to remember specific terms.

The later chapters are organized into either orders, infraorders or subfamilies. While that sounds complex, it is just a method of grouping similar species. The chapters are then broken down into families and, finally, species. Each family is briefly described.

Some chapters are relatively short; featuring just two families and one species per family. However, I found the structure easy to follow.

Species Profiles

Most of the species featured are the different types of shrimp. There are only a couple of species in the chapters for krill, lobsters and prawns. I was initially overwhelmed by the inclusion of additional species, but it is understandable considering the physical similarities.

Each page features 2-3 profiles. These profiles have information on the species physical attributes, habitats/range and size. In some sections, the species description is just three lines. I would have been interested in additional information, even if that information fell outside the range of a standard field guide. The information, however brief, is useful. They focus on the differences between species, especially in cases where some species look superficially alike.

In most cases, you get one image of a species. In some cases, you can get up to three images if the species has variations. I was frustrated with the image quality of some species, but this is understandable considering their small size. I also would have liked maps of a species known range.

Do I recommend it?

I wouldn’t recommend this for the casual naturalist. The size of the shrimp and their quick movements can make identification difficult. I’d recommend a general marine guide or the guide to crabs.

This book is great if you’ve developed a special interest in shrimps. You will likely need to track down additional resources; however, the guide should suffice for identification.

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Book Review: The Complete Field Guide To Butterflies Of Australia

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I love butterflies. They are one of the easier insect species to see in a garden and are very beautiful to examine up close. Observers will quickly learn that being easy to see doesn’t mean that a butterfly is always easy to identify.

The Complete Field Guide To Butterflies Of Australia aims to help readers learn how to identify various species. The guide features all of the butterfly species on Australia’s mainland and remote islands. This review explores whether the guide is useful for beginners.

The introduction is information overload.

The readability of the introductory chapters in insect field guides is often varied. Authors have to tie a fine line between providing enough information for both the amateur and professional entomologist. This guide leaned towards the more advanced audience.

My main struggle was the lack of space. The authors condensed a lot of information into a short amount of space and didn’t have many page breaks. I understand the need for brevity, especially when you consider that this book is one of the longer guides at 397 pages. The sheer amount of information, however, was quite overwhelming.

The section on the adult structure was adequately explained. The first image, which showed the main parts of the body of an adult butterfly, was simple compared to the later ones. It very quickly gets complex, especially when you look at the adult wing structure. In some cases, you had to flip over the page to find an image that matched the description on the previous page. Those who are new to insect identification are likely to struggle and will need to return to these pages.

The section of habitats was four pages of information, followed by five pages with images of habitat examples. This would have been more practical if the images were included with the original text. The life cycle section was more helpful in this regard.

Species profiles

One of the problems when creating a comprehensive guide is that you have to be aware of space limitations. The authors were limited to three species per page, which limited the amount of information they could feature. The notes are still pretty comprehensive.

Profiles feature notes on the butterflies other names, wingspan, similar species, variations, behaviour, habitat, status and larval food plants. The length of each section varies depending on the species. In some cases, the ‘similar species’ section has a brief sentence explaining the features that make that particular species unique. In more complex cases, the section can take up half of the profile.

With most profiles, you get four colour plates. These show the underside and upperside of both genders. In some cases, a third column is added to show variations such as subspecies, regional forms and seasonal forms. Where necessary, the line drawings of critical structures needed for identification are included.

The various species are organized into the six different butterfly families: swallowtails, skippers, whites and yellows, nymphs, metalmarks and blues. There is also a smaller section on species found on Australia’s islands. No further information is given on the families with these sections; you have to refer to the lone paragraphs in the “How To Identify Butterflies’ section in ‘How To Use This Book.’

How does it differ from the first edition?

In the original text, 416 butterfly species were recognized, with 398 known from the continent. The remaining species were found on the remote island territories. By the publication of the second edition, those numbers had risen to 435 and 408 respectively.

The sections on higher classification, distribution and habitats, and life cycle and behaviour in the introduction have had substantial revisions. There is a new chapter on collecting and preserving butterflies and, for most species, the flight charts and distribution maps have been updated. There are also 106 new colour images of set butterflies that have been added to the colour plates. In some cases, these images have replaced the previous ones.

Do I recommend it?

I wouldn’t recommend it for most beginners. The content is brilliant; however, the comprehensiveness can lead to overwhelm. Instead, I’d recommend tracking down a regional or statewide guide to build up your knowledge of butterflies.

I would recommend it to those who are sure they want to focus on butterflies and those who are likely to travel to multiple parts of Australia.

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