Showing titles in Animals

A heartwarming account of the trials and triumphs a hummingbird rehabber encounters while caring for her tiny, fragile patients. This personal narrative is filled with the science and magic surrounding these fascinating creatures.

The European eel, Anguilla anguilla, is one of the strangest creatures nature ever created. Remarkably little is known about the eel, even today. What we do know is that it’s born as a tiny willow-leaf-shaped larva in the Sargasso Sea, travels on the ocean currents toward the coasts of Europe - a journey of about 4,000 miles that takes at least two years. Upon arrival, it transforms itself into a glass eel and then into a yellow eel before it wanders up into fresh water.

Voted the greatest English cricketer of the 20th century by the fans, Sir Ian Botham is the English game’s one true living legend, and his story, both on and off the pitch, reads like a Boy’s Own rollercoaster ride. Born with a natural genius for the game, Botham began breaking records with bat and ball from a young age and soon became the man English cricket expected most from. After a troubled period as captain, Botham rose once again to become a national hero with his display in the Miracle Ashes of 1981.

Caring for horses can give us a sense of responsibility. They can help in times of depression and take us out of ruts when we lose our ambition to do anything. It can help build confidence and allow us to build a sense of self-acceptance. Through interacting with horses, we can engage in emotional healing, relieve stress while building patience and trust. If you want to learn about how to care for horses and how horses can help you in your self-help journey, then this book is for you. If you are a novice or have been riding and caring for horses your whole life, this book is for you.

Listeners will be awestruck by the hive as superorganism and how the individual bee lives and behaves within it, perfectly suited to each specific job it performs. From their intricate dances and information-rich pheromones to how they sense and respond to their environment, learn, and remember, this immersive journey into the world of bees offers an entirely new perspective on the wisdom of nature and our relationship to it.

For the past year, veteran journalists Anders and Beverly Gyllenhaal traveled more than 25,000 miles across the Americas, chronicling costly experiments, contentious politics, and new technologies to save our beloved birds from the brink of extinction. Through this compelling drama, A Wing and a Prayer offers hope and an urgent call to action: Birds are dying at an unprecedented pace. But there are encouraging breakthroughs across the hemisphere and still time to change course, if we act quickly.

Once commonly found in the marshes of Kent, the short-haired bumblebee is now extinct in the UK but still exists in the wilds of New Zealand, descended from a few queen bees shipped over in the 19th century. A Sting in the Tale tells the story of Goulson’s passionate drive to reintroduce it to its native land and contains groundbreaking research into these curious creatures, history’s relationship with the bumblebee, the disastrous effects intensive farming has had on our bee populations and the potential dangers if we are to continue down this path.

Ivory's Ghosts is the first comprehensive, contemporary look at the world's most treasured organic material, ivory. Using a wide range of historical and firsthand reportage, John Frederick Walker tells the astonishing and sometimes savage story of ivory's enormous impact on both human history and that of its most important source: the majestic African elephant.

One December, in midsummer South Africa, Tim Dee was watching swallows. They were at home there, but the same birds would soon begin journeying north to Europe, where their arrival marks the beginning of spring. Greenery recounts how Tim Dee tries to follow the season and its migratory birds, making remarkable journeys in the Sahara, the Straits of Gibraltar, Sicily, Britain, and finally, by the shores of the Arctic Ocean in northern Scandinavia. On each adventure, he is in step with the very best days of the year - the time of song and nests and eggs, of buds and blossoms and leafing.

On the Alaska Peninsula, where exceptional landscapes are commonplace, a small river attracts attention far beyond its scale. Each year, from summer to early fall, brown bears and salmon gather at Brooks River to create one of North America's greatest wildlife spectacles. As the salmon leap from the cascade, dozens of bears are there to catch them, and thousands of people come to watch in person or on the National Park Service's popular Brooks Falls Bearcam. The Bears of Brooks Falls tells the story of this region and the bears that made it famous.

Raymond Ditmars (1876-1942), the first curator of reptiles at New York's famous Bronx Zoo, brought cold-blooded animals to public attention as never before. Through wildly successful books and movies, he inspired a generation of zoologists with his fascination for snakes, insects, and other misunderstood creatures. Ditmars was among the most celebrated naturalists in America. His reptile-collecting trips for the zoo spawned newspaper headlines across the world.

A transcendent collection of essays about the human relationship to the natural world. In Vesper Flights Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved pieces, along with new essays on topics and stories ranging from nostalgia and science fiction to the true account of a refugee’s flight to the UK.

Riley Black brings us back in time to prehistoric seas, swamps, forests, and savannas where critical moments in plant evolution unfolded. Each chapter stars plants and animals alike, underscoring how the interactions between species have helped shape the world we call home. As the chapters move upwards in time, Black guides listeners along the burgeoning trunk of the Tree of Life, stopping to appreciate branches of an evolutionary story that links the world we know with one we can only just perceive now through the silent stone, from ancient roots to the present.

The Atlantic grey seal is globally rare—there are fewer grey seals in the world than African elephants—and Britain hosts 40 per cent of this world population. Over the course of a year in their lives, Susan Richardson comes to know a colony of seals, watching as it is hit by storms in the autumn pupping season, experiencing sociable winter haul-outs and sympathising as the colony scratch and fidget through their annual moult.

John Gierach is known for his witty, trenchant observations about fly-fishing. In A Fly Rod of Your Own, Gierach once again takes us into his world and scrutinizes the art of fly-fishing. He travels to remote fishing locations where the airport is not much bigger than a garage and a flight might be held up because a passenger is running late. He sings the praises of the skilled pilots who fly to remote fishing lodges in tricky locations and bad weather.

America's highest military award, the Congressional Medal of Honor, was awarded to 440 deserving members of the "Greatest Generation" that served in World War II. But in 1943, before the war was even over, Allied leaders realized they needed another kind of award to recognize a different kind of World War II hero - animal heroes. Founded in 1943, the prestigious PDSA Dickin Medal is the highest award an animal can achieve for gallantry and bravery in the field of military conflict. It was given to 55 animals who served valiantly alongside the members of the Greatest Generation.

As a small boy, Bill François was frightened of deep water. Until a chance encounter with the elusive sardine set him on course for a life in marine science: a mission to better understand, and preserve, the underwater world, to find his place in that ecosystem and learn how to converse harmoniously with the ocean. In a series of exquisitely rendered vignettes of marine life, François invites us on a whistle-stop global tour to reveal the mysteries of the sea, beginning with the simple eloquence of the sardine.

I first got exposed to the idea of beekeeping back in 2005 by my next door neighbors. They were doing it right in their backyard, and according to them, they were making a decent side income from it. As our third child was on the way, I was trying to figure out a way to make some extra income, and yes, I dove right into this business without knowing anything about bees.

Butterflies are one of the world’s most beloved insects. From butterfly gardens to zoo exhibitions, they are one of the few insects we’ve encouraged to infiltrate our lives. Yet, what has drawn us to these creatures in the first place? And what are their lives really like? In this groundbreaking book, New York Times best-selling author and science journalist Wendy Williams reveals the inner lives of these 'flying flowers' - creatures far more intelligent and tougher than we give them credit for.

In New Guinea Pidgin, Thrown Way Leg means to go on a journey and it is also Tim Flannery's invitation to join him on his breathtaking adventure through the jungles of Papua New Guinea and Irian Jaya. Flannery meets skilled hunters, befriends shaman, climbs mountains never before scaled by Europeans, discovers new species and stumbles across the giant bones of extinct marsupials. You will never think about the bird-shaped island to our north the same way again.