Natural History Reading

My shelves are filled with natural history books.  Some are field guides, some provide activities, and some are essays, fun to read and learn about.  Here are some natural history suggestions for your enjoyment in each of five categories: urban/suburban wildlife, illustrated tales, bees, explorations, and memoirs.

Urban/suburban wildlife books include stories close to home.  Going Wild, by Robert Winkler, is an adventurist’s tale of bird watching for urban dwellers, without leaving their home neighborhoods.  Cities everywhere have areas to visit away from structures and the everyday life of humans that host large varieties of birds.  Winkler provides a fun account of his many bird encounters and observations in his backyard and surrounding habitats.  For The Love of Birds, by Kay Charter, is a series of tales from a master birder and storyteller.  Kay relates not only her observations in the field, but what she has learned about birds through various interactions with different species and habitats.  In Hunting for Frogs on Elston, Jerry Sullivan provides a humorous and informative insight to our interactions with the lives of wildlife species sharing the big city.

Illustrated tales are natural history essays enhanced by beautiful artwork by artists.  Letters From Eden, by Julie Zickefoose, follows nature through the year in the fields and woods around her home in Ohio, lushly illustrated with pencil and watercolor sketches.  A Blessing of Toads, by Sharon Lovejoy, is a collection of essays about gardening and other botanic endeavors on both coasts of the U.S..  Sharon includes many simple drawings that illustrate the finer points of each story.  The Wild Remedy, by Emma Mitchell, is a collection of photos and drawings from the countryside surrounding her Cambridge home.  The accompanying essays provide natural history facts and personal reflections from the author as well as her struggles with mental health over a lifetime.  The Comfort of Crows, by Margaret Renkl, is a week to week account of the plants and animals surrounding her backyard home in Nashville.  Hand-drawn watercolors panels  illustrate the many nature aspects of each week.

Dave Goulson has written a two-volume set, A Sting In The Tale, along with the companion volume, A Buzz in the Meadow, providing an in-depth look into the natural history of bumblebees.  He is the founder of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, an organization dedicated to learning, teaching, and conserving bee populations in the United Kingdom.  The first volume covers the natural history of short hair bumblebees, once native to the United Kingdom, but now found only in New Zealand, and his work to re-introduce them back into the U.K.  The second volume is a story of his efforts to study and learn about bees by buying a farm in France to raise bumblebees.  He covers many facets of bee life with a lyrical style of writing, spinning a wonderful tale of a lifetime spent following a passion.

Peter Wohlleben has written three volumes of essays based on his personal observations of plants and animals in a variety of habitats from his home and the surrounding woodlands of Germany.  The Hidden Life of Trees shares discoveries about how trees communicate with each other and influence woodland habitats.  The Inner Life of Animals are essays based on Wohlleben’s observations of how various animal species interact with their own habitats.  They  make decisions on how to stay healthy, raise a family, and find good places to live, just as we do.  The Secret Wisdom of Nature encompass the first two volumes along with aspects of habitats that influence all the species living in them.  Read as a trilogy, these volumes provide oodles of natural history information laced with ideas and thoughts to help each of us expand our own observational studies.

Memoirs are stories about each author’s life experiences with natural history.  In Nature On The Doorstep,  Angela E. Douglas writes a letter every few days to her family back home in the U.K. relating observations made in her new home and garden in New York.  Readers may particularly enjoy the translations between words and names in two versions of the English language.  Naturalist, by Edward O. Wilson, describes his early childhood as a boy exploring nature and how that brought him to a life-long career as one of our leading nature scientists.  My Family and the Other Animals, by Gerald Durrell, is another wonderfully detailed insight into a childhood spent exploring nature in a new location.  Chasing Dragonflies, by Cindy Crosby, provides an in-depth look into her favorite hobby: monitoring, studying, and involving others in her quest to learn about dragonflies and damselflies.

These books provide stories, insights, and ideas for you to pursue as the summer season begins to heat up.  Find one for yourself or consider a gift book for a friend who loves nature.  If you have books that you have found to be insightful and interesting, or have started you on a new journey, consider sharing them in the comments section for this blog.  Have fun reading!