It was during a walk near Radley Lakes with my friends Jo and Chris that I first suddenly took notice of the isolated curious brown stalks with the odd curling bits all around their tops. We had been stooping our way through what was once a water meadow but of more recent use as a […]
Now in it’s seventh edition and continuing under the authorship of Jon L. Dunn and Jonathan Alderfer, with range maps by Paul Lehman and additional artwork by David Quinn, John Schmitt, and Thomas Schultz, this new National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds presents its readers with 1,023 species. Following the taxonomy and nomenclature – both common and scientific – of the American Ornithological (due to an editorial error identified as “Ornithologist’s” in the text) Society, and with a bit of a nod given to the listing areas of the American Birding Association, this is indeed the most appropriate field guide for all who want not only a field reference that can identify any bird seen in its defined geographic area, but can also go deep into the metaphorical tall grass in pursuit of identifications down to subspecies level.
At the recently concluded BirdFair, should you have popped in at the Princeton University Press stand you would have noticed two new additions to the Britain’s Wildlife series prominently featured: Britain’s Spiders and Britain’s Mammals. While the spider guide has yet to reach my desk, a copy of the one for mammals appeared just this past week.