By Ken Behrens & Keith Barnes | Wildlife Explorer Guides | Paperback | October 2016 | 345 Pages | 900 Colour Photos | ISBN: 9780691161716
The Publisher’s View: The Indian Ocean island of Madagascar is one of the world’s great natural treasures and ecotourism destinations. Like Galápagos, it is a laboratory of evolution, but on a much larger scale, since it is home to nearly an entire continent’s variety of species, from the famous lemurs to a profusion of bizarre and beautiful birds, reptiles, and amphibians. Small and portable yet thorough, this is the most comprehensive single-volume field guide to Madagascar’s wildlife and the first to provide extensive coverage of the island’s butterflies.
More than 500 stunning colour photographs illustrate the vast majority of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and butterflies that a visitor is likely to see, along with a selection of insects and plants. Wildlife of Madagascar is organised by group – from mammals to plants – and its authoritative and accessible text provides key information about identification, habitat, behaviour, and conservation.
Ideal for everyone from casual tourists and nature lovers to experienced naturalists and professional biologists, this is an essential guide to the natural wonders of Madagascar.
Other Views: “With lovely images and well-written text, Wildlife of Madagascar covers a lot of groups and species and fills an important niche for English-speaking ecotourists visiting the island. The text is organised to allow quick access to details about different groups in the wild.”
– Steven Goodman, Field Museum of Natural History
The Authors: Ken Behrens is a naturalist and photographer who lives in Madagascar and works as a guide for Tropical Birding, a birdwatching, wildlife, and photography tour operator.
Keith Barnes, a native of South Africa, is a founder and director of Tropical Birding. He holds a PhD from the Percy FitzPatrick Institute in African Ornithology at the University of Cape Town. Barnes and Behrens are also the authors of Birding Ethiopia and Wild Rwanda.
Fatbirder View:I’ll keep this short as otherwise my envy will show to clearly. My oldest friend has been to Madagascar. It’s not a place my infirmities allow me to visit unless the National Lottery has a change of heart. It is a place of many and sometimes difficult terrains. Moreover, it is a place of almost mythical and magical differentness. When the supercontinent broke and drifted Madagascar became an island and while other landmasses converged it remained isolated so has an extraordinary endemism. It is sadly diminished by poor land use and poverty driven slash and burn agriculture and hillside firewood collection. I really, really want to see its wonderful birds, but, like the average travelling birder I’d also want to know what else I’d see. This book is the companion such birders would want alongside their finer bird ID guides. Yes there are photos of all the birds, but it is also a reference for those weird chameleons and wonderful lemurs… in fact all that is weird and wonderful in Madagascar’s wildlife is here.It is, of course, one of the WILDGuides series that is consistently of high calibre.I really, really wish I could tuck this in a pocket and be transported to this wonderland right now!
Buy this book from NHBSFatbirder