Standing up for Nature
This is not an atlas and it has no poems, but it is certainly botanical. What we have here is a delightful book about tropical botany. Originally written in French, by a rainforest expert, this introduces the reader to a few dozen remarkable tropical plants, many of which are trees. The illustrations, by the author,…
Reviewed by Ian Carter Aficionados of the humble, yet hard-pressed, Hedgehog are spoilt for choice these days. Hedgehog books are multiplying, as the animal itself becomes ever more difficult to track down. This mirrors a general trend in natural history writing. We have a rapidly expanding library of information at our finger-tips but, with every…
Reviewed by Ian Carter I’ve always liked books about alternative lifestyles, especially by people seeking out a gentler pace of life, more attuned to the natural environment. This is a good example and it’s a book I gradually warmed to as the author’s journey across the North Kent Marshes (contrary to the sub-title) unfolds. In…
This is an appropriately weighty book on a portentous subject. It is very attractively produced with many photographs of wildlife, habitats and people and a fine looking jacket by Carry Akroyd (although the jacket on my copy is slightly ill-fitting). The index is very good but the reference list is rather shorter than I expected….
OK, so this book isn’t about landfill (although it is a bit). It is a book about gulls (but not just about gulls) and it is a book about the author (but not just about the author) and it is about Bristol (but not just about Bristol). And at this point I have to state…
This book by an ecologist and keen angler, is a series of short essays about life by, on and in the river through the year. It focuses on riverine processes and ecology, and flows very well. Each of the 60 short essays, five for each month, also has an illustration from the author. And he…
I like these RSPB Spotlight books (see reviews of Kingfishers and Bumblebees). This one is about bats. It’s quite a wide-ranging book with information about the 17 UK species but also about a range of the world’s other 1400 bats. It’s understandable that we don’t know a huge amount about bats – they are nocturnal,…
I’m not keen on the cover of this book and I’m not that keen on its title, but I really enjoyed the story. A middle-aged lapsed birdwatcher takes up the hobby again and tries hard to see 200 species in a calendar year while also being a freelance conductor (of music). Does he succeed? I…
I really hadn’t appreciated that the collective name for a bunch of martens was a ‘richness’ until reading this book. And there are many individually-known Pine Martens that feature in this book, all living on the westernmost peninsula of Britain, on Ardnamurchan. The book is an account of the behaviour of Craig, Clive, Chris, Chloe,…
But this is the book I am reading at the moment…