Calpurnia Tate is the child all naturalists wish they were as children: endlessly curious, possessing of boundless energy, and most important of all, beginning their explorations of the natural world at an age when the mind has not yet been conditioned to repress questions because they might seem silly or pointless to others.
Regardless of where your travels might take you in this world (and if Sir Richard Branson is successful in his venture, any other) it’s always a good idea to read-up on your destination before you go. For travelling naturalists and wildlife photographers, such preliminary study is not just a good idea, it’s of paramount importance. [...]
From their spectacularly colorful wings that can be maddeningly difficult to get into proper focus to their flighty feeding habits that cause them to move to another flower a split second before the shutter release button is depressed, butterfly photography can test photographic skills in ways few other nature subjects can.
It is too easily forgotten that some of the world’s greatest naturalists were also devoutly religious. None other than Charles Darwin himself studied to be a clergyman prior to his sailing on the H.M. S. Beagle. His very journals written during this history-changing voyage are replete with references drawn directly out of his wrote knowledge of the Christian scriptures.
When it comes to the stuff of which nightmares are commonly made, it’s difficult to find a more commonly employed foundation material than the creatures contained in the Phylum Arthropoda, particularly those included in the Classes Insecta and Arachnida; in common parlance – insects and spiders. Different from us in so many ways – number [...]
To borrow a well-used old phrase and write that Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Research Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, “wrote the book” on ants is neither to exaggerate nor employ a metaphor; it was written in scholastic partnership with his long-time scientific collaborator Bert Hölldobler, titled The Ants, and published in 1990. In 1991 [...]
How does one go about writing an encyclopedia of insects? In terms of species, the sheer numbers of those thus far described by entomologists alone would fill several volumes if nothing more than their names were recorded.
If only the eleventh chapter of Elizabeth J. Rosenthal’s Birdwatcher: The Life of Roger Tory Peterson was the entirety of the book, it would still be well worth the cover price…
“Everyone is a birdwatcher, but there are two kinds of birdwatchers: those who know what they are and those who haven’t realized it yet.” So begins The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature, Jonathan Rosen’s investigation into not only the history of bird watching but into its very underlying spirit. While [...]
The decision to review the recently published National Geographic Ultimate Field Guide to Travel Photography (National Geographic Photography Field Guides) in The Well-read Naturalist was not one made lightly. After all, WRN is explicitly dedicated to books pertaining directly to the study of natural history in all its myriad forms. Would a book providing advice [...]
