Saturday, February 10, 2007

Guide Books for Belize

Wildlife Guides
Lonely Planet’s Watching Wildlife Central America.
Lonely Planet’s Watching Wildlife Central America.
$20 or so. I would not recommend this book, I think the latter book Costa Rica: Ecotravellers’ Wildlife Guide is a better wildlife guidebook. The one nice thing about the book is that it tells you which parks (in Belize, Costa Rica, and Panama) to hit for wildlife viewing.
Belize and Northern Guatemala. Ecotravellers’ Wildlife Guide
Belize and Northern Guatemala. Ecotravellers’ Wildlife Guide
$25 or so. If you looking for one guide for the region this is it. An all inclusive wildlife guide, including birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals. It doesn’t give all that much information about each specific species but it does give the meat: range maps, illustrations, and a bit of the biology.
Birds
A Guide to The Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America.
A Guide to The Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America.
$25 or so. A very good guide book in my opinion, some of the range maps were a bit off but for the most part it was a great book. I thought the illustrations were adequate and there was a ton of information on each bird. That being said, the book is huge! It is not ideal for in the field use. This book does not have the illustrations for many of the migrant breeders.
While traveling I believe I saw a field guide of much smaller size, with smaller, but all of, the illustrations and no other information other than the range maps. It very well might have been an updated field guide version. It was orange and white.

Amphibians and Reptiles
A Field Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of the Mayan World.
A Field Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of the Mayan World.
$35 or so. A great book that has photos and not illustrations, a downfall in my opinion. It does have range maps for all species in addition to the hundreds of drawings. The range maps only show the Mayan World.

Travel
Lonely Planet Belize
Lonely Planet - Central America on a Shoestring
We ended up getting the Central America on a Shoestring edition along with 75% + of the other travelers, its only downfall in my opinion. It’s a fun guide, that centers around nature based travels on the cheap.

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