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| Books I Use |
| I'm including this section in my webpage because without good, reliable resources, there really isn't much point in trying to educate yourself. These are some of my main references that I use for tracking and natural history of animals. They are all very good as far as I'm concerned and I would recommend them to anyone. |
| WILDLIFE OF PENNSYLVANIA AND THE NORTHEAST - Charles Fergus I really like this book. Charles Fergus wrote the Wildlife Notes for the PA Game Commission for several years so he obviously has an extensive background with wildlife. This book has sections on everything from birds to reptiles and amphibians to mammals. It's very detailed and it even has some of his personal experiences within the text if you like that. |
| GUIDE TO ANIMAL TRACKING AND BEHAVIOR - Donald & Lillian Stokes This is a great book for mammals. It has individual sections for each animal but the first entire half of the book is dedicated to how to recognize sign in the field. It's detailed enough that it shows how to differentiate between similar sign made by different species (such as claw marks, den diameter, scat etc.). This book is very detailed and it's perfect for getting all the finer points of tracking. |
| NORTH AMERICAN WILDLIFE - Readers' Digest This is a good broad-topic book. It covers mammals, reptiles, amphibians, plants, birds, and other things. Nothing goes into a whole lot of detail but it has range maps for North America and is a really good guide for quick species identification. It's especially useful to figure out what something is using this guide and then use one of these other books to go into more detail. |
| ANIMAL TRACKS - PETERSON FIELD GUIDE - Olaus J. Murie This is a decent guide. It doesn't go into a whole lot of detail but it makes for quick reference on track/scat sizes and basic characteristics of animals. For me anyway, there is a lot of wasted space because a lot of animals in this book aren't even found on this continent. |
| GUIDE TO THE MAMMALS OF PENNSYLVANIA - Joseph Merritt This book has its moments. It is great for learning about natural history of mammals but some of the information on a species susceptability to Rabies is somewhat misleading. One of the strongest points of this book is that it has range maps for North America and specifically for Pennsylvania. |