Standing up for Nature
I’ve been catching up with John Riutta’s recent book reviews on The Well-read Naturalist. I read all of his book reviews even those that are rather local to his part of the world, of northern Oregon. I read them because they are so thoughtful and so well written. I sometimes feel I’d rather read John’s…
The cover of this book shows a beautiful Great Grey Owl with yellow eyes, barred feathers and trailing legs in flight, with what looks like snow falling off its legs and feet. The blurred background looks like a forest and the book’s title is in yellow with the rest of the writing in white but…
The Birdwatch Birders’ Choice awards allow you to vote for the best bird book of the year. These are the five short-listed books: Red Sixty Seven All the Birds of the World Multimedia Identification Guide: shearwaters Diary of a Young Naturalist Moult and Ageing of European Passerines I’ve only read one of these books, but…
The UK Overseas Territories (UKOTs) are 14 remnants of the British Empire which have the British monarch as their Head of State, depend on the UK for their defence and which all have coastlines. All are closer, geographically, to other sovereign nations than they are to the UK but all have strong cultural ties to…
Ian Parsons has written more than 20 guest blogs here and so is a fairly familiar name to this blog’s readers. But when not writing for this blog he is a nature tour leader in Extremadura and this blog is about that land, west of Madrid and stretching to the Portuguese border, its wildlife and…
This is the type of book you will like if you like this type of book, or probably more likely, if you need this type of book. It is clearly a niche publication of most use to raptor workers who often visit the nests of raptors and want to identify the prey remains that they…
James Rebanks’s earlier book, The Shepherd’s Life (reviewed here), was a great read despite being very irritating in many places. I made it this blog’s book of the year in 2015 and, rather more importantly for the author and publisher, it was a best-seller. This book is less irritating but is still a great read….
I’m rubbish at plants so I don’t know how much I will use this book, but I’m interested in books on natural history and I can see that this is a high-grade piece of work. This is another Princeton University Press/WildGuides field guide and they are almost always clear, well-designed and written by experts (see…
I’ve sat in audiences and listened to David Attenborough, I’ve talked to him, briefly, with others, and, like you, I’ve watched him and listened to him on television. He once phoned me at the RSPB and as Claire, my PA, said ‘It’s David Attenborough on the phone’ my brain thought ‘But I need to be…
This is a charming book about a species that is being lost from our lives. I haven’t seen a live Hedgehog for several years and there aren’t many squashed on the roads around here these days. Friends and family send videos of hedgehogs if they come across one – this once common species is now…