Birds, Beasts, and Relatives

Book Description

Part coming-of-age autobiography and part nature guide, Gerald DurrellÂ's dazzling sequel to My Family and Other Animals is based on his boyhood on Corfu, from 1933 to 1939. Originally published in 1969 but long out of print, Birds, Beasts, and Relatives is filled with charming observations, amusing anecdotes, boyhood memories, and childlike wonder.

Customer Reviews:

Another book of lovely excursions to the island of Corfu.......2007-09-24

This is another wonderful books of Gerald Durrell's memories of his time on the island of Corfu prior to the Second World War. He takes us back to another time and place before the world changed for good.

Each chapter is a separate story and rememberence of those days when as a young man he marvels at not only the natural world around him, but also the various people he encounters and learns to appreciate. It is easy to get lost in one of these stories and feel like you are there with him on a hot summer day with his faithful dogs tagging along beside him.

I recommend this book to anyone who not only loves nature, but also can appreciate a time gone by when people were different and even strangers were looked as guests. This book is one that I intend to read again and again in the coming years and will appreciate the stories just much each time as the first time.

Good product.......2007-08-16

The books arrived in perfect condition and in very good time. I am completely satisfied.

Menagerie.......2003-10-07

Gerald Durrell is the younger brother of Lawrence Durrell. The island of Corfu lies off of the Albanian and Greek coastlines. The family settled there to escape the deary English weather.

Gerald's mother fought a losing battle with the Greek language. The family members became familiar with all of the peasants in the region. Gerald had a tutor named George who was an adept of fencing and an adult scientist friend named Theodore.

Gerald visited the rock pools while his sister swam. Margo's sun bathing bothered a church functionary, a monk. Gerald sought permission to follow a fisherman, to accompany him in his boat when he fished at night. The fisherman used a trident to catch scorpios.

There was a myrtle forest near the family's house. Gerald received a rich dark brown donkey for his birthday. The donkey was used by Gerald to transport things. Larry brought home friends, artists and writers, and brought home an artist who could play the accordian, Sven.

Theordore had told a countess that Gerald, who was a fairly young boy at the time, was a naturalist and had a number of pets. The countess offered to give him a white owl who had an injured wing. Gerald went to fetch it and to meet her on his donkey.

He wanted to add baby hedgehogs to his menagerie. When he went away for a weekend his sister overfed them and they died. The book is joyous and colorful. The snippets above are used to give the reader a sense of what to expect.

Another fix of Durrell family fun.......2001-02-06

I eagerly read this after "My Family and Other Animals" (which I had enjoyed immensely). It contains stories which were omitted from "My Family" and while the offerings were still magical and wonderfully well-written and sometimes hilarious (especially the story about the turtle), it lacked the memorability of its predecessor. There was also no real structure in the order of the stories, this is more of a miscellaneous collection.

My family and other animals.......2000-02-29

I read Gerald Durrell's books 10 years ago, while I was still living in Romania. I loved his books from the first page to the last and literally I couldn't put them down until I finished them. The best humour I ever met in books! His stile is unique. I am planning on reading all of them again in English. I would recommend them to anyone!

King Of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run Of Salmon

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Say Goodbye to Salmon
Capitalism can't protect the Salmon
How to Save Salmon - Lessons from History

King Of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run Of Salmon
David R. Montgomery
Manufacturer: Westview Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0813342996
Release Date: 2004-12-28

Book Description

A passionate recounting of the natural history of the rise and fall of salmon in England, New England, and the Pacific Northwest-with recommendations for bringing the salmon back.

The salmon that symbolize the Pacific Northwest's natural splendor are now threatened with extinction across much of their ancestral range. In studying the natural and human forces that shape the rivers and mountains of that region, geologist David Montgomery has learned to see the evolution and near-extinction of the salmon as a story of changing landscapes. Montgomery shows how a succession of historical experiences -first in the United Kingdom, then in New England, and now in the Pacific Northwest -repeat a disheartening story in which overfishing and sweeping changes to rivers and seas render the world inhospitable to salmon. In King of Fish, Montgomery traces the human impacts on salmon over the last thousand years and examines the implications both for salmon recovery efforts and for the more general problem of human impacts on the natural world. What does it say for the long-term prospects of the world's many endangered species if one of the most prosperous regions of the richest country on earth cannot accommodate its icon species? All too aware of the possible bleak outcome for the salmon, King of Fish concludes with provocative recommendations for reinventing the ways in which we make environmental decisions about land, water, and fish.

Customer Reviews:

Say Goodbye to Salmon.......2005-09-13

I read this book with great interest and I am saddened by what I learned. I was raised in a town on the Columbia River and as a young fisherman, heard stories of large historic Salmon runs described in near myth-like terms. Back then I was taught to blame the tribes, gill netters and other commercial fisherman for the diminished runs. If only the problem were that simple. As Montgomery clearly describes, through an interesting comparative analsis, Salmon runs have historically been driven into extinction, first in Europe, then England, then New England, and now the Pacific Northwest in more or less the same fashion. As the areas around native salmon waters became populated and developed, our society has made certain choices, economic v. environmental, which not surpisingly have nearly always favored the economic. As a result, salmon runs were decimated by the construction of dams, overfishing, pollution, misguided hatchery programs, the clearing and diking of streams, destruction of wetlands, logging practices, and simply by population growth and development, which Montgomery describes as a death by a thousand cuts. Presently, salmon runs in the Pacific Northwest are at just 6-7% of their historical numbers. As the region's population is expected to double within this generation, conditions will likely only get worse. While Montgomery identifies steps than can be taken to revive these runs, it seems doubtful there is enough public sentiment or political will to effect these changes. If anything, this books is a sad commentary on our society's ability to manage its resources. Salmon, which are a symbol of the great Pacific Northwest, will soon be gone for good.

Capitalism can't protect the Salmon.......2004-05-22

Dr. Montgomery shows that if the toxic and human waste poured into the rivers of the industrial revolution did not poison Salmon, the incipient capitalist institution of commercial fishing would swallow most of them.. Montgomery quotes records from the holder of fishing rights on a specific part of the Thames river. The records of this particular holder shows he caught 66 salmon in 1801, 18 in 1812 and only 2 in 1821....by the 1960's, the annual salmon catch of England and Wales was a quarter of that a century earlier. He quotes an account of MP Robert Wallace about parliament blocking effective salmon protection laws at the behest of the commercial fishing industry, dam operators, etc.

He quotes accounts from the early 19th century including from Henry David Thoreau about the severe depletion of salmon stocks in Northeast U.S. rivers caused by the disruption of salmon spawning beds by the transportion of boats and logs down the river, dams, factory poisons and so on.

Salmon stocks continued to decline to near extinction in Eastern U.S. waters. The Danish government agreed to ban its fisherman from engaging in their highly destructive open ocean fishing off the coast of Greenland, where salmon from Britain, the U.S, and Canada often converge for their sojourns in the Ocean, in 1972. However Danes continued to fish heavily near the Greenland shore, and used vessels under other nation's flags to circumvent their salmon catch quota under the 1972 agreement.

Montgomery shows how salmon have been sacrificed since the Great Depression in favor of the dams which have provided water and electricity in the Eastern Pacific Northwest from the Snake and Colombia Rivers. In 1937, U.S. fisheries commissioner Franklin Bell let it be known that he wasn't going to strain himself too much on behalf of the Salmon. "Aside from blind restriction" of commercial fishing, he explained, "the protection of individual runs menaced by virtual extinction must be left to chance."

Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest thrived on salmon for subsistence, and to preserve the run, would commonly allow half of the run to pass through its nets. But with the coming of commercial fishing dominated by whites, Indian livelihood was wiped out. They could not compete in commercial fishing, lacking the wealth to purchase the sophisticated boats and nets increasingly becoming common. Indians became a racist scapegoat for the depletion of salmon stocks. He notes He notes though that state records that the entire Indian fishing catch from 1935 to 1950 was less than the total commercial catch during a typical year.

Washington State had always claimed that on traditional Indian fishing grounds based on treaties made regarding Colombian basin rivers in the 1850's, Indians merely had the same rights as whites to exploit salmon. But in 1970, federal district court judge George Boldt ruled that the treaties actually reserved for Indians half of the annual salmon supply. In 1975, the Supreme Court upheld Boldt's decision. In 1980, Federal Judge William Orrick declared that under the old treaties, maintaining decent habitat for salmon spawning fell to Washington state. Shortly thereafter a three-judge panel of the 9th circuit overturned the decision. The issue of maintaining the habitat has not been resolved. He points out that native Americans have not been given "special rights" in fishing, as white fisherman and the demagogues inflaming them have claimed but the treaties, signed as they were under pressure, were grants by the Indians to the White man on the Indian's land. Not grants by the white man to the Indian.

, Hatcheries were promoted as the catchall solution to salmon shortages. Huge investments were made in this new technology by Washington and Oregon governments beginning the late 19th century. However, writes Montgomery, in the long term, hatcheries have clearly failed. Salmon cannot simply adapt to any stream or river. They seem genetically programmed to operate in limited regions. Hatcheries salmon are selected from a very limited gene pool i.e. lack of genetic diversity and can produce defective offspring with their wild brethren. The hatchery salmon are found to be much more aggressive than their wild counterparts in eating up the food supply, thus making the wild ones lose out in the survival of the fittest. In particular hatchery fish, can introduce deadly diseases to their wild brethren. In the mid-70's a parasite from hatchery fish wiped out restored wild salmon stocks in Norwegian rivers.
By the early 1990's, while the Colombia river held an estimated 11 to 16 million salmon before the arrival of Europeans, by then it had dwindled to around 2 million wild fish. Yet the number of hatchery fish in the river was estimated at the time to be around a hundred million.

Likewise, on the East coast, salmon produced in "farms" i.e. maintained in cages at sea, sometimes accounted for the majority of spawning salmon in a river. An estimate of the National Research Council declares that 180,000 fish a year escape from their farms in Maine. They spread disease to wild salmon and mate with them, creating large numbers of genetically limited salmon. According to Montgomery, those 180,000 fish are ten times the number of wild salmon left in New England. In Europe, he notes, the amount of farm salmon being produced was 100 times the catch of wild salmon.

He advocates strictly enforced moratoriums on fishing, increased preservations of wetlands to allow for the creation of flood produced salmon-friendly side-channels, strictly enforced regulations on placing passageways for salmon in dams, regulations to prevent salmon waterways from being polluted and to make sure that salmon do not end up as carcasses on farmland after being swallowed through irrigation pumps. The economic actors involved continue to block serious efforts to protect the salmon as they always have. He notes how the Bush administration has blocked efforts to address over-fishing.

How to Save Salmon - Lessons from History.......2004-03-20

Montgomery's book is centered on the notion that we are failing to learn from history when it comes to the Pacific salmon crisis. In England, eastern North America, and now the Pacific Northwest, human actions that inevitably destroy the "king of fish" have been repeated. Overfishing, blocking salmon from their spawning habitat, and causing the deterioration of habitat quality through pollution, land clearing, and simplification of the river are the culprits. Montgomery also tells why hatcheries are not the solution and never have been. He closes with a clear and, to me, indisputable analysis of what we must do to preserve and recover this most amazing of creatures. The book is quite accessible to a layperson; you don't need a scientific background, or even any knowledge of the problems facing Pacific salmon, in order to enjoy and learn from the book.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year: Portfolio 15 (Wildlife Photographer of the Year)

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Wildlife Photographer of the Year: Portfolio 15 (Wildlife Photographer of the Year)
BBC Books
Manufacturer: BBC Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 056352278X
Release Date: 2007-03-27

Book Description

Showcasing the work of the world’s top nature photographers, this lavish, large-format volume presents the 100 best images submitted to Wildlife Photographer of the Year, the largest, most prestigious wildlife photography competition in the world. Selected from 20,000 images and representing 60 countries, the pictures range from plants to endangered animals, underwater life to landscapes—all dramatically displaying the beauty and variety of the natural world. Featuring behind-the-scenes information and photographic details for each image, this is a magnificent volume for all lovers of wildlife and fine photography.

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London's Royal Parks
Royal Parks Foundation
Manufacturer: Think Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1845250141

Book Description

Published in association with the Royal Parks Foundation, this lushly photographed tribute celebrates some of London’s—and the UK’s—most well-known and best-loved public spaces. From regal palaces and military monuments to art exhibitions and Speakers’ Corner, they provide reminders of Britain’s rich and varied past and present-day settings of great beauty. Each park receives it own chapter, complete with an at-a-glance timeline and breathtaking original photographs that reveal its own special character. The highlights include bluebell season in Bushy Park, the blooming rose garden in Hyde Park, an autumnal Thames view from Richmond, summer boating on the Serpentine, and much more.

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The Aran Islands: Another World
Bill Doyle
Manufacturer: Lilliput Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Most of the Photos Are Boring
A Good Book by Two who've done Better
Visually stunning book

Visions of Roses
Peter Beales
Manufacturer: Bulfinch Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0821223186

Customer Reviews:

Most of the Photos Are Boring.......2006-04-15

Most of the photos are not of the "garden", but only the plants, plus a lot of the pics are not sunny enough to be pleasing. There are only a few worthy interesting "garden" scenes. The book's inside flap's description, therefore, was too misleading.

A Good Book by Two who've done Better.......2004-09-11

Anyone who has seen Vivienne Russell's book on Monet's Garden knows that this photographer is capable of capturing the spirit of a garden - the way it looks and feels. She has an eye for light, detail, nuance, composition. So when I ordered this book, I was expecting to be equally wowed. But I wasn't.

Much of this is because Monet's Garden at Giverny is in a class by itself. It is, perhaps, less a garden than a living, breathing three dimensional piece of art. I know as a photographer that when I photograph a garden, it is usually the case that I must move through the garden judiciously and figure out exactly where to stand and what to look at if I am to capture it at its best. But at Giverney the opposite is true. Stand in any spot and look in any direction and you will find a perfect shot. This explains much of the gap.

Yet I know the discrepancy is more than this, because one can find photos with noticable photographic flaws in this book - mostly blown highlights. So part of the blame lies in the photography. That said, the photos are generally first rate and they are blown up large and reproduced well, all this giving us a better view of rose garden vistas than we can get anywhere else.

In delivering these vistas it fills a niche that few books attempt. And it does so very well. It describes how to build gardens with roses; how to use them in all sorts of ways other than lining them up like so many wooden soldiers on a review field.

In some ways I prefer Tony Lord's Designing with Roses. It is more about the language of design expressed in rose language. And its photos are more colorful. But to see real gardens and to hear them being discussed by their owners and one of the best rose authorities writing today is a great and rare asset. There is no other book that tries to do this. And this one does it very well.

Visually stunning book.......1997-09-14

This is a visually stunning tour of rose gardens throughout Europe and the United States. Beales interviewed the owners and describes their gardens in glorious detail. The photographs by Russell are equally beautiful. This is a beautiful book that gardeners and rose lovers will love to have in their library.

Complete Irish Wildlife (Collins Complete Photo Guides)

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Complete Irish Wildlife (Collins Complete Photo Guides)

Manufacturer: HarperCollins UK
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0007176295

Book Description

Complete Irish Wildlife describes almost all the mammals, birds, fish and butterflies of Ireland likely to be encountered by the keen amateur naturalist, as well as all the common and widespread flowers, trees and shrubs. With over 1,000 colour photographs, this comprehensive guide illustrates every species described. The introduction by Ireland's best known wildlife expert, Derek Mooney, sets out where you can find the best of Irish wildlife. Reptiles and amphibians, insects and spiders, molluscs and other invertebrates are also featured, and species are organized taxonomically. Each section is coded with a symbol for quick reference and species are grouped according to natural relationships and similarities. With its handy format and PVC wallet, Complete Irish Wildlife is a book no nature lover should travel without.

Wildlife of Africa: Photographs In Celebrartion Of The Continent's Extraordinary Biodiversity, Fauna and Flora (Gerald & Marc Hoberman Collection)

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Stunning Photography

Wildlife of Africa: Photographs In Celebrartion Of The Continent's Extraordinary Biodiversity, Fauna and Flora (Gerald & Marc Hoberman Collection)
Gerald Hoberman
Manufacturer: Gerald & Marc Hoberman Collection
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1919939237

Customer Reviews:

Stunning Photography.......2006-04-07

If you are bored by tiresome text about African animals and like some of the best African animal photos ever taken, this book is for you. This book is all photos, taken over many years in many places. Some of the photos have titles identifying the subjects; many of the photos are completely untitled.

On the downside, if you need some descriptions and background to accompany the photos, you won't get it here.

Finding Order in Nature: The Naturalist Tradition from Linnaeus to E. O. Wilson (Johns Hopkins Introductory Studies in the History of Science)

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Finding Order in Nature: The Naturalist Tradition from Linnaeus to E. O. Wilson (Johns Hopkins Introductory Studies in the History of Science)
Paul Lawrence Farber
Manufacturer: The Johns Hopkins University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0801863902

Amazon.com

Before the 18th century, scholarly interest in the natural world was largely the province of medical doctors, artists, and alchemists. During that century, however, and for many reasons, the study of nature spread to all sectors of society. As Paul Farber points out in this history, most private libraries contained Buffon's 36-volume encyclopedia of animals, and practical-minded politicians such as Thomas Jefferson urged that the natural world be catalogued with an eye to economic potential and utility, the gods of the Enlightenment. The resulting attention to classification and systematics influenced natural history for generations. This work of sorting remains at the heart of basic science, Farber continues, and if some scholars scorn it as old-fashioned, the need to catalog the world continues to be pressing as the biodiversity crisis mounts. Examining the contributions of thinkers as various as Nicholas Baudin, Julian Huxley, Charles Lucien Bonaparte, Stephen Jay Gould, and Edward O. Wilson, Farber shows that the "naturalist tradition," which seeks to identify the underlying order of nature, is not only of central importance to the life sciences, but also an ideal vehicle for communicating advanced research to the educated public. --Gregory McNamee

Book Description

Since emerging as a discipline in the middle of the eighteenth century, natural history has been at the heart of the life sciences. It gave rise to the major organizing theory of life--evolution--and continues to be a vital science with impressive practical value. Central to advanced work in ecology, agriculture, medicine, and environmental science, natural history also attracts enormous popular interest.

In Finding Order in Nature Paul Farber traces the development of the naturalist tradition since the Enlightenment and considers its relationship to other research areas in the life sciences. Written for the general reader and student alike, the volume explores the adventures of early naturalists, the ideas that lay behind classification systems, the development of museums and zoos, and the range of motives that led collectors to collect. Farber also explores the importance of sociocultural contexts, institutional settings, and government funding in the story of this durable discipline.

"The quest for insight into the order of nature leads naturalists beyond classification to the creation of general theories that explain the living world. Those naturalists who focus on the order of nature inquire about the ecological relationships among organisms and also among organisms and their surrounding environments. They ask fundamental questions of evolution, about how change actually occurs over short and long periods of time. Many naturalists are drawn, consequently, to deeper philosophical and ethical issues: What is the extent of our ability to understand nature? And, understanding nature, will we be able to preserve it? Naturalists question the meaning of the order they discover and ponder our moral responsibility for it." -- from the Introduction

The Complete Guide to British Wildlife (Collins Handguides)

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The Complete Guide to British Wildlife (Collins Handguides)
N. Arlott , A. Fitter , and R. Fitter
Manufacturer: Harpercollins Pub Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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