“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 […]
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National Geographic Ultimate Field Guide to Travel Photography
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 […]
The Hedgehog’s Dilemma
In his famous work Parerga und Paralipomena, the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer put forth the dilemma faced by a group of hedgehogs who need to huddle together in order to share one another’s body heat and thus better survive the cold.
Remarkable Creatures
The search for the solution to what Sir John Herschel famously called the “mystery of mysteries” – how new species come to exist – has brought a myriad of remarkable creatures to the attention of science.