Books published by publisher Bloomsbury Natural History

Across the country, backyard birds are a growing trend-an extension of the urban farming movement. With just a little land and available water, you can raise all kinds of domestic fowl: ducks and geese, as well as turkeys, guinea fowl, quails, and peacocks. Celia Lewis's Illustrated Guide to Ducks and Geese and Other Domestic Fowl is full of practical advice, starting with how to choose the right breed.The book covers sixty-five of the most popular domestic breeds in Europe and North America, helping you make informed decisions based on your environment, the personalities and temperaments of different birds, their eggs and meat, and whether you intend to breed them. Lewis offers advice on housing, water, and feeding; the impact of birds on your land and on your neighbors (such as noise); and on the prevention and treatment of common ailments. She also provides brief profiles covering the history and place of origin of each breed, and appearance of males, females, and chicks-illustrated in her own lush watercolors. Lewis has created a practical guide thorough enough for a small farmer and beautiful enough to grace the coffee table of a casual enthusiast.

We are all fascinated by, and often wary of, the tiny animals that creep and crawl in our gardens or lurk in the dark corners of our homes, but how much do we really know about insects and their relatives? Nick Baker's Bug Book aims to encourage our understanding of all types of bugs by providing practical information and fun activities. Learn how to determine the sex of a spider, how to look after ants in a home-made formicarium and even how to rear your own dragonflies. Packed with details on essential equipment for bug watching and collecting, informative illustrations and close-up photography, this book is essential reading for budding entomologists of all ages.

With just a little land and available water, you can raise a variety of domestic fowl, from friendly ducks and characterful geese to guineafowl, dainty quail, placid turkeys or even peafowl. Illustrated with the author's charming watercolour paintings, this book is packed with practical tips on keeping domestic fowl and selecting the right breed for your circumstances. Covering 65 domestic breeds of ducks, geese, guineafowl, quail, turkeys and peafowl, the book gives an insight into the individual personalities and attributes of each kind of bird. The breed profiles are written in engaging text and include the history and place of origin, colour combinations, differences between male and female birds, the appearance of hatchlings and the numbers of eggs to expect. As well as selecting an appropriate breed, you need to consider your neighbours, the kinds of bird you can and should keep, whether you want them for eggs or as pets, and whether you want to breed them. The book offers helpful advice on all these issues and also on housing, the provision of water, feeding and the noise and impact your birds will have, as well as preventing and treating common ailments. Whether you are starting out as a smallholder, are interested in raising a few ducks or geese in a suburban or rural setting, or are simply a devotee of domestic fowl there is plenty to captivate you in this book.

This title offers a new, reformatted and updated edition of this popular title which is suitable for experts and armchair enthusiasts alike. Fossils: A Photographic Field Guide will appeal to anyone interested in uncovering the many mysteries of the subject. Easy to use, highly informative and illustrated throughout with amazing color photographs, this title covers all classifications of fossils, with more than 190 fossils from around the world featured. Information given for each fossil includes its genus name, the main identifying characteristics of the genus, its maximum or average size, information about its occurrence, and general information pertaining to either the genus or the particular specimen featured. A quick reference guide to the geological range of each genus is also included in the form of an icon, which sits beside each genus name. Box features are peppered throughout the book, providing information on a number of topics relevant to a featured fossil's family or order. A geological timescale is also provided to help the reader to gain a sense of temporal perspective and also to complete the identification process. An easy-to-use, clear recognition guide, this book cuts through the complexities of fossil identification, making the process straightforward and simple.

Join CBeebies' Jess French on an exciting tour of marvelous minibeasts.With her unparalleled zeal for insects, Jess French dives headfirst into the breathtaking world of invertebrates to explore their unbelievable adaptations and evolution and reveal incredible invertebrates from all over the world, from bird-eating tarantulas and glow-in-the-dark scorpions to meter-long stick insects and bat-eating centipedes.Fancy meeting a foot-long centipede or a spider the size of your dinner plate? With Minibeasts with Jess French, you can do just that from the safety and comfort of your sofa. Learn about the perfect co-evolution of nectar-drinking insects and the flowers they pollinate and discover how minibeasts mate, fight, hide, collaborate, evolve, and survive in the most extreme conditions.Jess’s exuberant text enlightens readers on the fascinating and sometimes intense world of the minibeast, revealing everything from firefly Morse code to mid-flight kamikaze mating.

A new edition of this popular title. We are all fascinated by, and often wary of, the tiny creatures that creep and crawl in our gardens or lurk in the dark corners of our homes, but how much do we really know about insects and their relatives? For instance, could you identify the larvae of a ladybug, which each eat fifty aphids a day? And did you know that some species of snail are hairy?This book aims to encourage our understanding of all types of bugs that can be found in our back gardens and beyond--worms, snails, ants, wood louse, centipedes, flies, grasshoppers, beetles, bees, wasps, spiders, and butterflies (to name but a few)--by offering practical information and fun activities for the whole family. Learn how to determine the sex of a spider, how to look after ants in a homemade formicary, and even how to rear your own dragonflies!Packed with details on essential equipment for bug watching and collecting, clear annotated diagrams on bug anatomy, and amazing full-color close-up photographs, as well as astonishing facts on insect behavior and identification, this book is essential reading for budding entomologists of all ages.

Fancy meeting a foot-long centipede or a spider the size of your dinner plate? Willing to let the world's weirdest and most fascinating minibeasts join you on your sofa?Then allow Jess French to lead you head first through the unbelievable world of invertebrates and explore their incredible adaptations, from dancing scorpions and blood-sucking moths to zombie spiders and slime-shooting worms.Marvel at how minibeasts have evolved to survive in almost every describable habitat. Discover the fascinating ways they find food, mate, fight, hide and collaborate in even the most extreme conditions! And pore over more than 250 breathtakingly detailed photographs of astonishing invertebrates.With her unparalled zeal for minibeasts, Jess will enlighten you on the most fascinating and intense aspects of the minibeast world, revealing everything from cloaks made of corpses to mid-flight kamikaze mating.

This book is a celebration of the wildlife and landscapes of Britain's most vital wildlife habitats--those that make up our coastline. Sheer limestone crags resound with the voices of thousands of bickering seabirds; endless acres of estuarine mud are packed with squirming invertebrates that sustain thousands of wading birds. In between are the dazzling chalk outcrops of the south coast with glorious floral communities on the clifftop meadows, shingle beaches where terns and plovers hide their eggs among the stones, and dune systems bound together with marram grass and supporting a unique and fragile ecosystem. Rocky shores harbor microcosms of marine life when the retreating tide leaves rockpools exposed for our exploration, and even the rowdiest seaside towns have their own special wildlife alongside the wild nightlife. Grand-scale color photos bring the wild coast and its inhabitants to life, while the text tells you what you'll see and where, from Land's End to John O'Groats via the scenic route. Beautifully illustrated with color photographs and authoritative text, this book is a celebration of the wilder aspects of the UK's coasts.

This book is a celebration of the wildlife and landscapes of Britain's most vital wildlife habitats – those that make up our coastline. Sheer limestone crags resound with the voices of thousands of bickering seabirds; endless acres of estuarine mud are packed with squirming invertebrates that sustain thousands of wading birds. In between are the dazzling chalk outcrops of the south coast with glorious floral communities on the clifftop meadows, shingle beaches where terns and plovers hide their eggs among the stones, and dune systems bound together with marram grass and supporting a unique and fragile ecosystem. Rocky shores harbour microcosms of marine life when the retreating tide leaves rockpools exposed for our exploration, and even the rowdiest seaside towns have their own special wildlife alongside the wild nightlife. Grand-scale colour photos bring the wild coast and its inhabitants to life, while the text tells you what you'll see and where, from Land's End to John O'Groats via the scenic route. Beautifully illustrated with colour photographs and authoritative text, this book is a celebration of the wilder aspects of the UK's coasts.