Wildlife Related Books - Non-fiction

[Flutterby]

Giants of the Desert: The Elephants of the Namib and the World They Live in

- Fritz Eloff
- ISBN 978-1869193904



The Kaokoveld, one of the world’s most forbidding wastes, is host to an assortment of animals that have found ways of surviving in this hostile environment. Here giraffes go entirely without water, and rhinos climb towering mountains in search of that scarce resource.

Most unforgettable of all must be the elephants of the Namib. Witnessing these giants cross bare sand dunes is a once-in-a-lifetime sight, and Prof. Fritz Eloff writes evocatively of their habits and environment.

Giants of the Desert is a fascinating introduction to this harsh world and its denizens, vividly brought to life in both images and words.

[Flutterby]

In search of the African Wild Dog

- Roger & Pat de la Harpe
- ISBN 9781919938110



The African wild dog, Lycaon pictus, among the most efficient of Africa's large predators, is also one of the southern Africa's most highly endangered mammals species. Persecuted and hunted to the brink of extinction, the African wild dog is today rarely encountered in its natural range.
In Search of the African Wild Dog is a dramatically visual and well-researched exploration of the history and habitat of the African wild dog and the measures needed to ensure its preservation in South Africa and the adjoining Northern Tuli Game Reserves.

[Flutterby]

Mon Nov 07, 2011

The African Wild Dog
Behaviour, Ecology and Conservation

- Scott Creel and Nancy Marusha Creel
- ISBN 0691016542



With only 5,000 surviving, the African wild dog is one of the worl's most endagered large carnivores - and one of the most remarkable. This comprehensive portrait of wild dogs incorporates previously scattered information with important new findings from a six-year study in Tanzania's Selous Game Reserve, AFrica's largest protected area.
The book emphasizes ecology, concentrating on why wild dogs fare poorly in protected areas that maintain healthy populations of lions, hyenas, or other top carnivores. In addition to conservation issues, it covers fascinating aspects of wild dog behaviour and social evolution. The Creels use demographic, behavioral, endocrine and genetic approaches to examine how and why nonbreeding pack mates help breeding pairs raise their litters. They also present the largest data set ever collected on mammalian predator-prey interactions and the evolution of cooperative hunting, allowing them to account for wild dogs' prowess as hunters........

[Flutterby]

Complete Photographic Field Guide Birds of Southern Africa
over 2500 images for accurate identification

- Ian Sinclair / Peter Ryan
- ISBN 9781770073883



Comprising the largest and most comprehensive collection of photographs of southern Africa's birds in one volume, this field guide brings a new dimension to bird identification in the region. It describes and illustrates all 958 bird species found in southern Africa, and an additional 17 species recorded from Antarctica, the Southern Ocean and associated islands.

- over 2500 colour photographs show age and sex plumage variations, perched and in-flight birds, and colour morphs where relevant
- Text - by Africa's top birding authors - focuses on identification, call, habitat and status, breeding details and diet
- Colour-coded distribution maps show resident and migratory status, and bird density
- Annual calendar bars show, at a glance, when species are present and when they breed
- Group introductions give additional infromation on biology as well as clues to identification
- A-Z directory provides a quick guide to locating groups.

[Flutterby]

The Behaviour Guide to African Mammals
Including Hoofed Mammals, Carnivores, Primates

- Richard Despard Estes
- ISBN 9780520080850



The Behaviour Guide of African Mammals is as different from a conventional field guide as motion pictures are from a snapshot. Whether we are able to look at them face to face, on television, or in the hundreds of illustrations provided here by Daniel Otte, this guide allows us to understand what animals do and what their behaviour means.

[Flutterby]

Beat about the Bush
Mammals

- Trevor Carnaby
- ISBN 9781770092402



How does the elephant's trunk work?
The elephant is the only vertebrate animal (those with an internal skeleton) to have helical bands of muscle, similar to an octopus' tentacles. They wind around the trunk that is also made up of longitudinal and radial muscles, enabling this dextrous tool to expand, contract and rotate in myriad ways.

This book follows in the footsteps of its immensely popular predecessor of the same name. This expanded version has, however, been revised to cover mammals in a much more comprehensive manner with updated classifications, new questions and answers, a more user-friendly format and more than 600 full-colour photographs. The section on tracks and signs is superbly illustrated to make this intimidating and confusing subject easy to grasp.

[Moggiedog]

A Walk in the Park

- Denis Beckett
- ISBN 9781920154073

A Walk in the Park will inspire your next holiday, maybe even change your life.

From the Kalahari to the Limpopo, from Cape Town to Mpumalanga, and from the Free State to the Karoo, this book follows the author’s three-month journey through 14 national parks, as she met passionate people and participated in exciting activities. This is no dry catalogue of the topography and ecology of South Africa’s national parks, no boring list of their facilities. Instead, it’s a dynamic string of experiences, activities and people both directly and tenuously linked to the parks. On the menu are activities, people, cultural heritage and food, peppered with interesting facts and liberally spiced with gentle humour.

This is a delicious book. It evokes things we love about the country around us. it conjures up places that soothe the soul. Its huge fault is that ... well, people are going to read it. And then where will all our best-kept secrets be?
Denis Beckett, author and TV trekker

Be warned! In your hands you’re holding a book that will unleash the adventurer in you. After reading this interesting, funny, but well -researched book, you’ll want to do nothing but start planning your own adventure … Enjoy and go Wild.
Glenn Phillips, Managing Executive: Tourism Development
and Marketing, South African National Parks http://www.sanparks.org

(This book is fantastic - not just amusing but very informative. In my opinion one of the best of its type I have ever read).

[dup]

Wed Dec 07, 2011
Die Veldwagter

- Hannes Kloppers



I'have the pleasure to lay my hands on "Die veldwagter"(The Game Ranger).Writen by Hannes Kloppers about the life of Harry Kirkman.
Harry started as a farm manager in 1927 at the Toulonblock ,also referd to as the Sabie ranch.. Bloc of land (10 cattle farms.(Belfast,Lisbon,Kingston,Toulon,Shaws,Dudley,Charlston,Flocfield,Malamala en Marthly.)This area was North of the Sabie -and both sides of the Sand- rivers.
He later start working as a game ranger in the Kruger N Park.
A very good book about the early days and history of the Park.

A few Interesting facts mention trough the book:
-counting a Sable herd of more than 150.
- there were so much Impala some places that the busch shines red.
-the old name of Punda Maria is Punda Malia.
etc.etc.

I did not see any mentioning of this book ( English or Afrikaans), although I think it could not be that unknown.
In my opinion a real gem and pleasure to read.

[Flutterby]

Born Free
A Lioness of Two Worlds

- Joy Adamson
- ISBN 9780375714383



Joy Adamson's story of a lion cub in transition between the captivity in which she is raised and the fearsome wild to which she is returned captures the abilities of both humans and animals to cross the seemingly unbridgeable gap between their radically different worlds. Especially now, at a time when the sanctity of the wild and its inhabitants is increasingly threatened by human development and natural disaster, Adamson's remarkable tale is an idyll, and a model, to return to again and again.

Illustrated with the same beautiful, evocative photographs that first enchanted the world forty years ago and updated with a new introduction by George Page, former host and executive editor of the PBS series Nature and author of Inside the Animal Mind, this anniversary edition introduces to a new generation one of the most heartwarming associations between man and animal.

[Flutterby]

Mahlangeni
Stories of a Game Ranger's Family

- Kobie Krüger
- ISBN 9780140242935



Mahlangeni is one of the most remote ranger stations in the Kruger National Park. Far from everywhere, this isolated corner of the wilderness was home for eleven years to Kobie Krüger, wife of the ranger in charge of the station, and their three daughters.Running a household and raising a family in a place where leopards, elephants, snakes and the like are your only neighbours, where you have no telephone, and where a trip to town means first crossing a river full of hippos and crocodiles, is hardly a straightforward business. But Kobie Krüger tacked each problem with undaunted pragmatism and an energy that gives new meaning to the word resourceful.