Standing up for Nature
Stories of ‘Big Years’ where the storyteller tries to see as many [some aspect of wildlife] as possible in [a defined area] in a year, usually a calendar year, are great fun. You do have to question the carbon emissions but if you can put them to the back of your mind then accounts of…
We are taken to conservation projects intent on saving endangered species – 10 from the northern and and nine from the southern hemispheres (18 animals and one plant). Which 19 would you have picked? We meet those who are engaged in preventing these species from being driven to extinction and hear their stories of success…
I like Green Woodpeckers, I always have, and was keen to find out more about them from the pen (keyboard I guess) of an acknowledged world woodpecker expert (see here for a review of the same author’s Wryneck). The book comprises 17 chapters which run from the taxonomy of the species through its anatomy, morphology,…
This is the bible for rewilders, and a solid tome it is too. The authors are, of course, the very best people in the UK to write such a book as they have ‘done it’ themselves at their estate of Knepp in Sussex. Knepp is a fantastic wildlife success story with rewilded habitats producing impressive…
This book is a series of stories which explore our relationship with animals. But what a series of stories! From a Barn Owl perching on someone’s head to the furore about letting a few White-tailed Eagles go on the Isle of Wight, by way of the DMZ between the Koreas, Palaeolithic cave paintings in Spain,…
Hedgehogs have declined very dramatically in numbers – to the point of being unknown, now, in many places where they snuffled in living memory. The declines in Hedgehog populations are of a similar scale to many of our largest declines in bird populations. It’s a bit surprising that even more hasn’t been made of the…
Paul Sterry is no stranger to the readers of this blog, having written a string of guest blogs here over the years. He is a prolific author and photographer. This book describes the success of action, and well-informed inaction, in creating a wildlife refuge. Sterry’s half-acre garden sounds like a veritable oasis embedded in the…
This book is beautifully written and for that reason I recommend that you read it. Now, to describe what it is about is a bit difficult. It’s certainly about places scattered across the world, including Wales, and it certainly has a lot of wildlife scattered through its pages but this book is about much…
I’m glad I read this book, and I’ve never read one quite like it. It’s an exploration of landscapes – how we portray them and how we feel about them. It ranges widely from the lunar landscape via Antarctica to East Anglia and from urban to rural. The author is a landscape architect (and I…
Any book which starts with a quote from Audrey Hepburn is off to a good start with me. She said that to plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow. No wonder there are now so many areas of artificial turf and gravel. But this book is an antidote to that as a ‘practical and…