Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald

$32.99 AUD

Category: Animals and Nature

Animals don't exist to teach us things, but that is what they have always done, and most of what they teach us is what we think we know about ourselves. From the internationally acclaimed author of H is for Hawk comes Vesper Flights, a transcendent collection of essays about the human relationship to th e natural world. In Vesper Flights Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved pieces, along with new essays on topics and stories ranging from nostalgia and science fiction to the true account of a refugee's flight to the UK. Her pieces ranges from accounts of swan upping on the Thames to watching tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary to seeking the last golden orioles in Suffolk's poplar forests. She writes about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds' nests, what we do when we watch wildlife and why. This is a book about observation, fascination, time, memory, love and loss and how we make the world around us, by one of this century's most important and insightful nature writers. ...Show more

THROUGH THE EYES OF A COW by RUCKLEY JODI SAREETA

$20.00 AUD

Category: Animals and Nature

Field Guide to Australian Birds 2E by Michael Morcombe

$47.45 AUD

Category: Animals and Nature

Written and illustrated by bird expert, Michael Morcombe, this is the most comprehensive field guide to Australian birds published. Simple, clear design links text and paintings; unique system of organisation of information; includes breeding section; maps define variances in ranges and subspecies.

The Last Lions of Africa by Anthony Ham

$31.50 AUD

Category: Animals and Nature

An incredible and moving account of one man's journey into the world of lions, why they are fast disappearing and what can be done to save them from extinction and thus save Africa, whose delicate ecosystem depends on these apex predators to keep everything in balance.

Animal Languages - The Secret Conversations of the Living World by Eva Meijer

$21.99 AUD

Category: Animals and Nature

'A rich compendium of incidents, anecdotes and studies illustrating the linguistic abilities of animals . . . a rewarding book' Sunday Times Dolphins and parrots call each other by their names. Fork tailed drongos mimic the calls of other animals to scare them away and then steal their dinner. In the s ongs of many species of birds, and in skin patterns of squid, we find grammatical structures . . . If you are lucky, you might meet an animal that wants to talk to you. If you are even luckier, you might meet an animal that takes the time and effort to get to know you. Such relationships can teach us not only about the animal in question, but also about language and about ourselves. From how prairie dogs describe intruders in detail -- including their size, shape, speed and the colour of their hair and T-shirts -- to how bats like to gossip, to the impressive greeting rituals of monogamous seabirds, Animal Languages is a fascinating and philosophical exploration of the ways animals communicate with each other, and with us. Researchers are discovering that animals have rich and complex languages with grammatical and structural rules that allow them to strategise, share advice, give warnings, show love and gossip amongst themselves. Animal Languages will reveal this surprising hidden social life and show you how to talk with the animals. ...Show more

Australasian Nature Photography (16th Ed 2019) by Australian Geographic Holdings Pty Ltd

$32.95 AUD

Category: Animals and Nature

The bioregion of Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica and New Guinea possesses a unique natural heritage stretching back 50 million years to the break-up of Gondwana. This annual photo competition focuses on this extraordinary legacy by encouraging photography of the regions nature and landscape and promo ting its special values. This 116 page hard cover book features the very best of the more than 1400 entries received in 2014, covering wildlife, sea creatures, flora and landscapes, a junior section plus a thought provoking section on human impacts. ...Show more

Bird Way by Jennifer Ackerman

$32.99 AUD

Category: Animals and Nature

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Genius of Birds, a radical investigation into the bird way of being, and the recent scientific research that is dramatically shifting our understanding of birds -- how they live and how they think. 'There is the mammal way and there is the bird way.' Thi s is one scientist's pithy distinction between mammal brains and bird brains: two ways to make a highly intelligent mind. But the bird way is much more than a unique pattern of brain wiring, and lately, scientists have taken a new look at bird behaviours they have, for years, dismissed as anomalies or mysteries. What they are finding is upending the traditional view of how birds conduct their lives, how they communicate, forage, court, breed, survive. They're also revealing the remarkable intelligence underlying these activities, abilities we once considered uniquely our own -- deception, manipulation, cheating, kidnapping, infanticide, but also, ingenious communication between species, cooperation, collaboration, altruism, culture, and play. Some of these extraordinary behaviours are biological conundrums that seem to push the edges of-well-birdness: A mother bird that kills her own infant sons, and another that selflessly tends to the young of other birds as if they were her own. Young birds that devote themselves to feeding their siblings and others so competitive they'll stab their nestmates to death. Birds that give gifts and birds that steal, birds that dance or drum, that paint their creations or paint themselves, birds that build walls of sound to keep out intruders and birds that summon playmates with a special call -- and may hold the secret to our own penchant for playfulness and the evolution of laughter. Drawing on personal observations, the latest science, and her bird-related travel around the world, from the tropical rainforests of eastern Australia and the remote woodlands of northern Japan, to the rolling hills of lower Austria and the islands of Alaska's Kachemak Bay, Ackerman shows there is clearly no single bird way of being. In every respect, in plumage, form, song, flight, lifestyle, niche, and behaviour, birds vary. It's what we love about them. As E.O Wilson once said, when you have seen one bird, you have not seen them all. ...Show more

Dangerous and Deadly Wildlife by Steve Parish; Ted Lewis

$14.20 AUD

Category: Animals and Nature | Series: A\Wild Australia Guide

Wild Australia Guides are must-have, ready references for around the home, in the car or to be tucked into a backpack. The series features stunning photographs and compact text for quick and easy identification. Each species profile provides essential information about its identifying features, habitat, diet, distribution and breeding. ...Show more

Dr Claire's Love Your Dog by Dr Claire Stevens

$37.99 AUD

Category: Animals and Nature

Fathoms: The World in the Whale by Rebecca Giggs

$32.99 AUD

Category: Animals and Nature

A work of bright and careful genius. Equal parts Rebecca Solnit and Annie Dillard, Giggs masterfully combines lush prose with conscientious history and boots-on-the-beach reporting. With Giggs leading us gently by the hand we dive down, and down, and down, into the dark core of the whale, which, she con vincingly reveals, is also the guts of the world.’ Robert Moor, New York Times bestselling author of On Trails: an exploration ‘There is a kind of hauntedness in wild animals today: a spectre related to environmental change … Our fear is that the unseen spirits that move in them are ours. Once more, animals are a moral force.’ When Rebecca Giggs encountered a humpback whale stranded on her local beach in Australia, she began to wonder how the lives of whales might shed light on the condition of our seas. How do whales experience environmental change? Has our connection to these fabled animals been transformed by technology? What future awaits us, and them? And what does it mean to write about nature in the midst of an ecological crisis? In Fathoms: the world in the whale, Giggs blends natural history, philosophy, and science to explore these questions with clarity and hope. In lively, inventive prose, she introduces us to whales so rare they have never been named; she tells us of the astonishing variety found in whale sounds, and of whale ‘pop’ songs that sweep across hemispheres. She takes us into the deeps to discover that one whale’s death can spark a great flourishing of creatures. We travel to Japan to board whaling ships, examine the uncanny charisma of these magnificent mammals, and confront the plastic pollution now pervading their underwater environment. In the spirit of Rachel Carson and John Berger, Fathoms is a work of profound insight and wonder. It marks the arrival of an essential new voice in narrative nonfiction and provides us with a powerful, surprising, and compelling view of some of the most urgent issues of our time.   ...Show more

Lost Companions - Reflections on the Death of Pets by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

$28.50 AUD

Category: Animals and Nature

A heartfelt exploration of human grief after the loss of a pet by the New York Times bestselling author of Dogs Never Lie About Love.

Reed Concise Gd-Lizards of Australia - Reed Concise Guide by Wilson Steve

$15.99 AUD

Category: Animals and Nature | Series: Reed Concise Guide

There are more then 800 species of lizards in Australia, and that number grows each year. Lizards live virtually everywhere, from parks and gardens in our towns and cities to peaks of the highest mountains and plains. And some thrive in the harshest conditions. It may be diminutive in size but it punche s well above its weight in terms of usefulness, being packed with more than 200 images covering many of the species most likely to be encountered in Australia. ...Show more