Chesapeake Bay Nature of the Estuary: A Field Guide

by Christopher White

This book has become the definitive field guide to the Chesapeake. Flora and fauna descriptions are arranged according to the Bay's nine major habitats -- from freshwater wetlands to saltwater marshes. Accordingly, readers can easily refer to the habitat in which they might be canoeing, for instance, and find the species that are common there. As a further aid in this process, the most important field marks of more than 500 species are shown in 350 superb pen-and-ink drawings, which make this benchmark work as visually appealing as it is useful.

224 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1989

Reviews

[Idyll · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so glad I found this book that looks at all life in the Chesapeake Bay system. It's opened my eyes to the profound diversity of the region. I now get the feeling I am living in the middle of an enormous sponge that's making all sorts of life happen!

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

White’s guide is good, but the field guide material for different ecosystems is repetitive and the book can’t really compete with the more thorough and better illustrated one by Jane and Robert Lippson. But for those who don’t want the biological and ecological detail in the Lippsons’ book, this is the one to get. And regardless, the first 25 pages are an excellent synopsis, giving an overview of the estuary’s ecology and biological productivity, and how its form and location produce great biological richness as well as ecological fragility; its geological history (fascinating); and a description of its salinity, tides and circulation. It also has good diagrams of migratory patterns and life cycles, and of plant zonation relative to tides. I’m tempted to say, If you never read anything else about the Bay, read those 25 pages. They’re easily worth the purchase on their own, but the field guide sections are also worth the purchase. You’ll just find yourself rereading essentially the same descriptions of blue herons in several locations. (But who could ever get tired of reading about blue herons?)