SLR Cameras are great for taking pictures of animals as you can see exactly what you are trying to take a picture of through the camera lenses. So what you see is what you will get on the film. Flash brackets are used to hold an off camera flash unit. Using a flash bracket will free up your hands and allow you to take pictures of your subject when your focal length is under a couple inches. Traditional on camera flash units don't allow for close-up work because the on camera flash would produce shadows at such close distances.
Macro lenses are no more than fixed focal lenth lenses with extension built into the lense assembly.
The same magnification rates can be obtained with normal lenses with the use of extension tubes. Macro lenses are ground to have superior optical qualities compared to regular lenses at the same apature settings and will usually have lower aperature number settings as well. Since you are using a flash to capture a moving animal you would never be shooting with the lense wide open anyway. Thus making macro lenses for for non professional photograpers a rather expensive and uneeded toy. I find that using 100 speed print film works great with flash at very small distances.