Tracks & SignsBirds and Mammals of Southern Africa and their Tracks and Signs (2 Books)

About

Tracking is a much-loved, yet difficult, subject that attracts at least some of the attention of almost every bush-goer who ventures into the wild places of southern Africa. The ability to accurately read difficult, partial, or little-seen signs left in the soil or sand is rare and largely the domain of professionals. However, by making use of Mammals of Southern Africa And Their Tracks & Signs, anyone who applies him or herself can begin to decipher these natural hieroglyphs etched on the ground.

Birds of Southern Africa And Their Tracks & Signs is a totally fresh approach to observing birds in our beautiful country. It affords you the opportunity to gather previously inaccessible and indecipherable information in the form of tracks and signs left behind by our avifauna. The book explores the unique details of the spoor, or tracks, of many species of birds. This is done in multiple ways including by observing their droppings, examining their feeding behaviour as well as their general nesting structures.

Mammals of Southern Africa and their Tracks & Signs

Lee Gutteridge, Louis Liebenberg

In this volume, Louis Liebenberg's highly accurate sketches of animal tracks, showing all the details one would find in a perfect example of the spoor, are combined with a wide selection of extremely varied photographs that explain the difficult truth of the matter, and represent what you are most likely to actually see in the many different substrates where the animals walk. This field guide to mammal tracks and signs also serves as an ID guide to the mammals of southern Africa as full colour photographs of each animal are included.

Birds of Southern Africa and their Tracks & Signs

Lee Gutteridge; Illustrated by Louis Liebenberg, Warren Cary, Mark Elbroch

It’s remarkable how tracks and signs in nature help you to enrich your knowledge of bird species, providing knowledge as straightforward as the shape of the individual nests of our various species of weaver, or the ability to recognise and understand the role of a drum-site in the life of a bearded woodpecker, or even being able to see the subtle signs of a cardinal woodpecker on the various acacia pods which host its larval food.
Louis Liebenberg has generously provided some sketches of spoor he has made for his own publications, making these clear schematics available to assist with identification. Skulls, feathers, beaks and eggshells are also occasionally encountered, and a few examples of these will be included, as they also tell a story of a bird which has passed by. This approach to southern Africa’s birdlife will add tremendously to how we experience our wonderful avifauna.