Kamana Required Resources
Required and Recommended Resources Updates
Kamana 2
We are upgrading Peterson's Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians to a required resource
for Kamana 2. It is split up into Western and Eastern guides. It is an
excellent resource for Kamana 2, 3, and 4. We are also removing the Golden Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians from the required resources list.
After years of quality service someone has created a field guide to birds that outdoes the Peterson Field Guide to Birds series. We are now recommending Sibley Guide to Birds.
There is a guide to Western and Eastern North America and a combined
guide to all of North America.
The reason we have switched to Sibley's
is because the drawings are outstanding and the information for each species is all on
one page. It is overall more user-friendly. If you already have Peterson's you
do not have to replace it, but it might make things go smoother with
you journals because you won't have to flip back and forth between
different pages for finding the range maps.
A suitable replacement for Peterson's Field Guide to Animal Tracks is Mark Elbroch's Mammal Tracks and Sign.
Elbroch has created a phenomenal book on tracking. Calling it a field
guide is a mis-nomer. It is a beast of a book with tons of amazing
photos and outstanding information on tracking. The only thing missing
is any information of reptiles, amphibians and insects (which Animal Tracks does have).
Another excellent resource for Kamana is the Audubon Regional Field Guide Series.
They are nice because there is one book that gives a basic description
of all types of flora and fauna. It is not extensive information, but
it is at a good level for the journals we are creating in Kamana.
Kamana 3
Peterson Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs now comes in Eastern and Western regional guides.
We are adding the Golden Guide to Weather to our required resource list. It provides an exellent introduction to weather patterns and formations.
Skeleton and Skulls and Bones have been increasingly harder to find. For a skulls replacement Mark Elbroch has created another tome called Animal Skulls.
It has hundreds of skull drawings from different angles. It is mostly
composed of mammal skulls, but it has some birds, reptiles and
amphibians. The text is a bit more scientific than I prefer. This is
somewhere between a field guide for lay-people and a college-level
textbook. It's an excellent resource, regardless.
Two outstanding bones books are Avian Osteology and Mammalian Osteology by B. Miles Gilbert. They will help you identify almost any bone in birds or mammals.
One note on the Golden Guides: Birds of North America is that it
is one of the only books separated by orders. In Field Pack 3.4 this is
essential to complete the task of journaling all of the bird orders.
Since this is a one-time task you can certainly get this from the
library instead of purchasing it. The biology textbook fits this
category as well. You can save yourself some money on getting this from
the library or a half-price bookstore.
Kamana 4
The Eastern/Western Stokes Field Guide to Bird Songs is our favorite cd for identifying birds. Peterson's Birding by Ear is unique because it is designed to teach birding rather than just have a random list of birds. While Peterson's is a good resource, we recommend Stokes for its quality of sound and comprehensive list of birds. The Peterson's cd's would be good ones to get at a library.