This series of Rapid Color Guides is part of a conservation effort in the Chicago region to provide inexpensive tools to speed up the process of learning and identification of organisms for everyone who is interested, from beginning students to professional biologists. The larger wild mammals, birds, and trees in the Chicago Region are well-known to most, but the thousands of smaller or less conspicuous species are certainly not. While there are many illustrated field guides for plants and animals in North America, these typically cover a huge geographic range and are both expensive and heavy for field work. Our experience in the tropics has shown that there are real advantages to guides that focus on a small region, not to mention far fewer species to cause confusion. These guides are not intended to replace the many excellent books available, but to open doors to learning and identification that will in fact lead interested naturalists to books and other more complete sources of information.

We are trying out several different approaches, both hard-copy and web-based. The Rapid Color Guides (now ready to download) are inexpensive sheets you can take into the field, filled with illustrations. These images eventually should be accessible on hand-held computers screens in the field when that becomes more practical than the hard-copy. We are adding links to other guides that are developed at The Field Museum.

We welcome corrections, suggestions, and interest in collaboration to make other guides at: lross@fieldmuseum.org. We have sister sites at Tropical Plant Guides and Tropical Animal Guides.

Disclaimer: The information here is provided "as is," with no guarantees.

© 1999-2005 The Field Museum, 1400 S. Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL 60605 U.S.A. (312) 922-9410. All Rights Reserved.

Admin: