A portable overview of Costa Rican wildlife which will be handy for those with a passing interest in wildlife. I rarely use it since I prefer the more detailed guides, but it is popular with travellers.

The new Garrigues field guide. I don't yet have a copy - it's in the mail! - but this guide has been very favourably reviewed. It's more up-to-date than the older guide (and birders will most readily notice that many a name has changed in the last two decades) and - more importantly for some - weighs about two thirds as much. This will certainly be with me on my forthcoming trip!

However, this is the mammal guide I carry. I bought it as soon as it came out for work in Nicaragua and fell in love with it. The illustrations are ground-breaking, the text hugely informative and it covers the whole of Central America. The only snag is the weight.

But if you love your herps and really want to go the whole hog, then this book cannot be bettered. Once again, its use extends far beyond the frontiers of Costa Rica and it makes dangerously addictive armchair reading too! I wish we had more works like this for South America.

The definitive guide to snakes and the only INBio guide to appear on the list. They are a series of locally produced, portable field guides to various aspects of Costa Rica's biodiversity and well worth purchasing, not least because the authors are experts in their field and profits support INBio - the National Biodiversity Institute. I have half a dozen of them, but I can't see them on Amazon.

Volume 2 of the above and perhaps only for specialists. Not cheap but the cost is worth it if you visit Costa Rica regularly or will use it elsewhere.

I don't yet have this field guide, but it looks like a new alternative to the above. It's on my Wish List!

Alexander Skutch's name is synonymous with the natural history of Costa Rica. This book tells his story. Besides co-authoring the first field guide to the birds, he made important contributions to ornithology, many of them published as readable books on various families of Neotropical birds.