If you’re fascinated by flora and fauna, our natural history section has everything you need. This list updates when we add new titles to the collection.
Book
Walking one day in the woods behind her cottage in Devon, nature illustrator and blogger Jo Brown became captivated by the sight of a Green Dock Beetle on a leaf and took a photograph of it in order to be able to draw it. That first tiny emerald bug ...
Without these little engineers of the earth, the world's soils would be barren, and our gardens and fields wouldn't be able to grow the food we need to survive. Worms recycle decaying plants, putting nutrients back into the soil; they provide a food source...
In a world of modern technology where we find ourselves living at a greater distant from nature and each other, Wild Rituals shows us the profound ways we are similar to the wild creatures that captivate us. Through the lens of the animal kingdom, th...
A beautifully illustrated, informative, and engaging guide to 100 plants used for medicinal purposes. Remedies derived from plants are the world's oldest medicines. Used extensively in China, India, and many African countries, herbal medicine has bec...
Fungi are diverse, delicious and sometimes deadly. With interest in foraging for wild food on the rise, learning to accurately identify fungi reduces both poisoning risk to humans and harm to the environment. This extensively illustrated guide takes a...
In 2017, scientists at an observatory in Hawaii detected an interstellar object near Earth, which they named 'Oumuamua. The more scientists looked at it, the weirder it got - this cigar-shaped object didn't behave like any other asteroid or comet seen...
Michael Fewer in A Natural Year observes the everyday nature of Irish gardens, parks and countryside over the course and development of the four seasons. Based on his personal nature diaries, kept at his homes in south Dublin and rural Waterford, he ...
"Originally Published in 1978, this special twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of the National Book Award finalist includes an entirely new afterword in which the author considers the current state of knowledge about wolves and recent efforts to rein-t...
A collection of vibrant essays to inform, stimulate and inspire every nature lover. Through unparallelled expertise as a field naturalist, Roy Dennis is able to write about the natural world in a way that considers both the problems and the progress in...
A bold new voice in nature writing, from the front lines of Britain's rewilding movement Bringing Back the Beaver is farmer-turned-ecologist Derek Gow's inspirational and often riotously funny firsthand account of how the movement to rewild the Briti...
In the endless light of summer days, and the magical gloaming of the wee small hours, nature in Jim's beloved Highlands, Perthshire and Trossachs heartlands is burgeoning freely, as though there is one long midsummer's eve, nothing reserved. For our flora...
This collection of seasonal essays by nature write Ted Williams combines in-depth information with evocative descriptions of nature's marvels and mysteries.
There is only one bird species that hunts in summer and rears its young in winter: the Emperor Penguin. These extraordinary animals survive the relentless Antarctic climate, braving an average temperature of -49 degrees Celsius, thanks to their speci...
There are some 10,000 bird species in existence today, occupying every continent and virtually every habitat on Earth. The variety of bird species is truly astounding, from the tiny bee hummingbird to the large flightless ostrich, making birds one of...
In the last fifty years our butterfly populations have declined by more than eighty per cent and butterflies are now facing the very real prospect of extinction. It is hard to remember the time when fields and meadows were full of these beautiful, de...
While cells are commonly considered the building block of living things, it is actually the communication between cells that brings us to life, controlling our bodies and brains, determining whether we are healthy or sick, and directly influencing how...
Before mammals, there were dinosaurs. And before dinosaurs, there were cephalopods—the ancestors of modern squid, octopuses, and more creatures—Earth’s first truly substantial animals. Essentially inventing the act of swimming, cephalopods presided over...
Alone on a remote mountaintop one dark night, a woman hears a mysterious voice. Propelled by the memory and after years of dreaming about it, Jini Reddy dares to delve into the 'wanderlands' of Britain, heading off in search of the magical in the landscape....
"A a botanist, Robion Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. [Here], Kimmerer brings these lenses...
Humans are the most inquisitive, emotional, imaginative, aggressive and baffling animals on the planet. But how well do we really know ourselves? How to Be Animal writes a remarkable story of what it means to be human and argues that at the heart of ...
On May 18, 1980, people all over the world watched with awe and horror as Mount St. Helens erupted. Fifty-seven people were killed and hundreds of square miles of what had been lush forests and wild rivers were to all appearances destroyed. Ecologists...
In last summer's devastating fires, Kangaroo Island lost half of its koala population, with many more left injured and starving. This is the inspiring and sometimes confronting story of someone who went to help and ended up a koala dad. When Kailas Wild...
An enticing illustrated look at pollination, one of the most astonishing marvels of the natural world. Pollination is essential to the survival of most plants on Earth. Some plants rely on the wind to transport pollen from one flower to another. Others...
100 Australian Birds is a beginner's guide to the world of birdwatching. From the outside, this strange hobby of birdwatching appears to consist of sizeable camera lenses, khaki pants that are pulled up too high, and gruelling treks in pursuit of rare...
"Weka are widespread throughout parts of New Zealand. They are inquisitive by nature, even if furtively, including venturing into peoples' homes and sheds when the opportunity permits and can be considered a bit of a menace! So why should we care about...
The Purple Emperor is one of England's most elusive and least-known butterflies. Matthew Oates has spent fifty years trying to unravel the Emperor's secrets. Many mysteries remain unsolved, but enough are revealed in this book to enable experts and n...
From the Common Swift, which can stay in the air continuously without landing for up to ten months at a time, even sleeping on the wing, to the tiny Goldcrest, Europe's smallest bird, which can lay one-and-one-half times its body weight in eggs every...
Edward O. Wilson recalls his lifetime with ants-from his first boyhood encounters in the woods of Alabama to perilous journeys into the Brazilian rainforest. Ants are the most warlike of all animals, with colony pitted against colony. Their clashes d...
Fungi can appear anywhere, from desert dunes to frozen tundra, and create anew from rotting matter. They can invade bodies and thoughts; they can live between our toes or between our floorboards; they are unwelcome intruders or vastly expensive treats;...
A beautiful, illustrated modern guide to nature for a new generation (including city-dwellers) and how it can impact our mental and physical wellbeing. Reconnect with nature and learn everything about the wonderful wild. Curator of the Thorp Perrow a...
If an alien visitor were to collect ten souvenir life forms to represent life on earth, which would they be? This is the thought-provoking premise of Marianne Taylor's The Story of Life in 10 and a Half Species. Each life forms explains a key aspect about...
Daringly innovative when it opened in 1848, the Palm House in Kew Gardens remains one of the most beautiful glass buildings in the world today. Seemingly weightless, vast and yet light, the Palm House floats free from architectural convention, at onc...
This engaging book delves into the private lives of wild birds to reveal why they behave as they do. Birds are intelligent, sociable creatures that exhibit a wide array of behaviours, from mobbing and mimicking to mating and joint nesting. Why do they...
One thing has become clear this year - we need nature more than ever. And although the natural world has never been more under pressure, there are still reasons to be hopeful. Through personal stories, conservation breakthroughs and fascinating scien...
Ever since Carl Linnaeus's binomial system of scientific names was adopted in the eighteenth century, scientists have been eponymously naming organisms in ways that both honor and vilify their namesakes. This charming, informative, and accessible his...
The theory of evolution by natural selection did not spring fully formed and unprecedented from the brain of Charles Darwin. Rather it has been examined and debated by philosophers the world over for thousands of years. This lively history traces the...
If it seems like Australia has a lot of dangerous creatures, that's because we do! Featuring some of the best content from Australian Geographic's 'Most Dangerous' and 'Most Deadly' series, this handy reference will help you to understand, appreciate...
Biology is the natural science that studies life on our planet: from fungi to fossils and ecosystems to extremophiles, there is a whole world waiting to be discovered.'Mind Maps: Biology' helps you to understand the natural world and to learn its language...
The author shares her discoveries of seaweed's history, culture and science from the Neolithic people of the Orkney Islands to the sushi artisans in modern Japan.
Since the 1500s, scientists have documented the plants and fungi that grow around them organizing the specimens into collections. Know as herbaria, these archives helped give rise to botany as its own scientific endeavor. Thiers explores how herbaria...
We are unprepared for the greatest discovery of modern science. Scientists are confident that there is alien life across the universe yet we have not moved beyond our perception of 'aliens' as Hollywood stereotypes. The time has come to abandon our fixation...
In the late 1940s, a small pack of wolves crossed the ice of Lake Superior to the island wilderness of Isle Royale, creating a perfect laboratory for a long-term study of predators and prey. Mech, a graduate student at the time, began research and wo...
A reference and identification guide to 1300 of the world's most significant trees. This beautifully illustrated volume, substantially updated for this new large-format edition, is the ultimate reference guide to more than 1300 of the most spectacula...
How one scientist unlocked the secrets behind some of nature's most astounding animals. From star-nosed moles that have super-sensing snouts to electric eels that paralyze their prey, animals possess unique and extraordinary abilities. In Great Adapt...
The conditions of Earth are not just good for life, they are perfect. Everything about our planet -- its size, its distance from the Sun, its spin and tilt, its moon -- is perfectly suited to our existence, and our planet's forces serve to nurture it...
Life is all around us, abundant and diverse. It is truly a marvel. But what does it actually mean to be alive, and how do we decide what is living and what is not? After a lifetime of studying life, Nobel Prize-winner Sir Paul Nurse, one of the world's...
Part H Is for Hawk, part The Soul of an Octopus, The Book of Eels is both a meditation on the world's most elusive fish-the eel-and a reflection on the human condition. Remarkably little is known about the European eel, Anguilla anguilla. So little, in...
A response to the devastating 2019-20 bushfires, Animals Make Us Human both celebrates Australia's unique wildlife and highlights its vulnerability. Through words and images, writers, photographers and researchers reflect on their connection with animals...
It's often said that the British are a nation of nature lovers; but what does that really mean? For some it's watching racer snakes chase iguanas on TV as David Attenborough narrates, a visit to the zoo to convene with the chimps; for others it's a.....
The Handbook of New Zealand Mammals is the only definitive reference on all the land-breeding mammals recorded in the New Zealand region (including the New Zealand sector of Antarctica). It lists 65 species, including native and exotic, wild and feral,...
The first modern anthology of Scottish nature writing which acknowledges the realities of our times, edited, curated and introduced by the award-winning author of Findings. The first ever modern collection of contemporary Scottish writing on nature a...
Presents a collection of essays about humanity's relationship with nature, exploring subjects ranging from captivity and immigration to ostrich farming and the migrations of songbirds from the Empire State Building.
Inside the epic quest to find life on the water-rich moons at the outer reaches of the solar system. Where is the best place to find life beyond Earth? We often look to Mars as the most promising site in our solar system, but recent scientific missions...
Collection of essays on the natural world during a year spent in the Blue Ridge Mountains reflects the author's interactions with her wilderness surrounding.
This wide-ranging and lavish book, substantially updated and adapted for this new large-format edition, presents an expert survey of the incredible floral diversity of the different regions of the world. More than 1730 species are featured, arranged ...
An evocative and richly illustrated exploration of flowers and how, over the centuries, they have given us so much sustenance, meaning, and pleasure.
An anthropologist visits the frontiers of genetics, medicine, and technology to ask: Whose values are guiding gene editing experiments? And what does this new era of scientific inquiry mean for the future of the human species? At a conference in Hong...
A whistling of whio? A loot of weka? A tussock of takahe? These collective nouns reveal something about the character of our birds, so we can get to know them better. Birds of New Zealand: Collective Nouns also contains information on how our birds live,...
Living at the border between life and non-life, fungi use diverse cocktails of potent enzymes and acids to disassemble some of the most stubborn substances on the planet, turning rock into soil and wood into compost, allowing plants to grow. Fungi not...
Never before have mushrooms generated so much interest, for their health benefits and medicinal properties, as well as a new understanding of their crucial role in a healthy environment and ability to regenerate damaged ones. If you are a newcomer, m...
"The alpine zone is usually defined as the area on a mountain between the upper limit of tree growth, the treeline, and where permanent snow begins. New Zealand's alpine land includes parts of the Southern Alps in the South Island, and the central No...
The forests near to where Russia, China and North Korea meet in a tangle of barbed wire are the only place on earth where brown bears, leopards and tigers co-exist. They are also home to one of nature's rarest birds, the Blakiston's fish owl. A chanc...
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