For his Sunday Book review this week, Mark has chosen the new fully updated edition of the Lincolnshire Bird Club’s “Birds of Lincolnshire.” (I’m trying to imagine what it would be like if the county of my own residence here in Oregon – Columbia – had a bird club that was capable of producing it’s own reference guide to the local bird species. For that matter, I’m trying to imagine if it had a bird club at all…)
It was approximately two months ago while out upon my morning walk that I casually looked over at the creek that ran under the second bridge I cross along my usual path and was struck at how the water seemed unnaturally still. Stopping and peering a bit farther over the bridge rail, I discovered the reason: some local beavers had constructed a dam across the flow just before it reached the bridge.
If you are fortunate enough to live in an area of Great Britain or Ireland where dragonflies and damselflies are beginning to be increasingly seen on the wing (or if, perhaps you are dreaming of one day making a visit to such a place), NatureBureau has a new book about which you will most certainly wish to know: David Chandler’s “A Beginner’s Guide to Dragonflies & Damselflies of Britain & Ireland.”
Focusing on the natural history of the British Isles, Mr. Eatherley takes up the search for the stories behind some of the “endless succession of animals, plants, fungi and other alien lifeforms” that have taken to calling the Isles home over the past centuries, and indeed, facing up to the reality that it’s now “often hard to work out what actually is native, and what is foreign.” (There’s a larger metaphor in there somewhere…)