This is a very good book, but some of the reviews are exaggerating a bit. First of all, there are no "thousands" of species in this book (nor in the Arctic), but "only" 213 birds and 77 mammals. Second, there are no fishes (whales and dolphins are mammals), nor plants.
The reasons why I do not give this book five stars:
- The plates that help to identify the animals are spread throughout the book, not in direct connection to the description, nor together in the middle or at the back. That makes it a bit hard to find them.
- Some of the photos are not perfect (and this is even more striking given the overall quality of the other photos).
- The descriptions of the distributions are sometimes incomplete, at least outside the Arctic region.
- It would have been nice if Northern Scandinavia had been included - to me, it's Arctic enough!
Truly complete
This is a thick, serious, and irreproachable tome on the wildlife of the Arctic. Fish, birds, mammals... Everything that you'd need in a reference source. Probably much too heavy for a field guide, but complete for reference back on the boat.
Excellent wildlife resource for the Arctic.
Very good resource for arctic wildlife. Hardbound and a little heavy for use as a field guide, but very good if you do not have to pack it around all the time.
Truely complete
This book is one of the best wildlife guides I have ever seen and by far the best wildlife guide of the arctic regions. I can recommand this book to anyone going (or living) there. The book starts with about 50 pages of introduction. In this part of the book different aspects of the region are described, such as geology, climate and a history of humans in the arctic. After that it really starts: some 300 pages filled with information of all kind of birds followed by another 100 pages about arctic mammals. Altogether this is a very complete, well illustrated guidebook. A "must have" for everyone interested in arctic wildlife!
incredible resource
This book is so incredibly in-depth on arctic species - from thousands of birds, fish, mammals, etc. There are great photographs as well as scientific illustrations for almost every species mentioned.
There is also a great exploration guide for each species - both as an introduction to the type of animal and where they predominate and also by specific species within those categories. The book then provides information on specific environmental habitat for that breed, their food sources, how they feed (methods), reproduction, how they live (where they sleep), specific sizes, confusion with near species, how they communicate etc.
The beginning of the book also goes into great detail about the different types of arctic habitat, seasonal changes and the delicate ecosystems as well as environmental changes and threats due to global warming and pollution. The text is scientific, so it sometimes takes a little reading to be able to draw parallels between species and changes in environment (not as direct as say, Greenpeace would be.) But definitely a must have for an encyclopedic library on Arctic wildlife.
