The Wildlife of Costa Rica: A Field Guide (Zona Tropical Publications)

This book is great if you plan on going once or twice to Costa Rica.I did find it was missing a lot of animals that we did come across though.

This guide is perfect and portable. We read the introductory pages to each section and scanned all of the creatures before the trip to make a list of what we wanted to see the most. While in Costa Rica, we used it every day of our vacation to learn more about the wildlife we saw. After getting home, it helped us to clarify different species while reviewing photos! Worth the $30; it's the only wildlife guide you need unless you are focused on a specific type of animal and need a specialized guide.

More information about birds would have been good, but the book presented a good overview of many kinds of wildlife visitors might see.

Took this book on our trip and was able to identify the critters we all saw. We all enjoyed reading about each one we saw.

The Wild of Costa Rica is a handy book insofar as it prepares you for some of the wildlife you're most likely to see in CR (or, as with things like the rare Resplendent Quetzal or Oncilla, the wildlife your guide would most excitedly point out should you be lucky enough to stumble upon them).Think of it as an overview, NOT as a Field Guide as the title misleadingly represents it as. There are no range maps (despite there being space), and little info for distinguishing difficult or variously appearing species. I used this as a supplement in conjunction with the outstanding The Birds of Costa Rica guide of the same series, useful for a) getting me excited about mamallian and reptilian species I might see, and b) providing some nice but limited photography and info on natural history.

We chose this book as a single volume to take with us on a month long trip to Costa Rica. The drawings were accurate and helped us identify a lot of wildlife, however we often saw birds and mammals that were not listed in the book. It covered the most common wildlife from mammals to insects and would be a great guide for a short trip to Costa Rica. However, if you are planning an extended stay or planning on spending a lot of time looking for wildlife, I would suggest investing in individual books for different wildlife types: mammals, birds and reptiles, insects and butterflies, and even one for plants. We wished we had the extra information at our fingertips despite the extra weight and bulk. The overall format was great, we just wished for a more comprehensive guide.

This is really good book - I wanted to find a field guide resource for the various animal species, but had a hard time finding books that extended beyond birds. This one has really nice illustrations and descriptions for the "casual" observer. It's not completely comprehensive (if it were it'd have to be a million pages long), but it was a great size and, overall, perfect for us. I was amazed at how many of these animals we saw! (It was nice to learn their names and a bit more about them.)I will say that I am still looking for a cool plant ID book, as there were so many SUPER cool plants that we saw and had no idea what they were.

Concise

You may find some of the illustrations a little basic and the bird section is far from complete otherwise useful if you’ve never visited before!

Bought this for my wildlife hols in Costa Rica. Was essential reading to be able to know which animals we were seeing each day. Took this out on our treks and adventures every day. Others on my trip wished they had bought this too.

A reasonable guide but duplicated a lot of information on bids which you don't need if you have the companion guide to birds. Would be better to have excluded the birds and add more information on other wildlife. If you only want one guide it will be ok but a lot of what we have seen was not in the book.

Greta item for my recent holiday to Costa Rica. Obviously not everything will be in it but it was a good overview of mammals, birds, butterflies and reptiles that’s I saw

All four corners damaged on front and back cover. Doesn’t look new. It has been returned