Reviews (1)

For your bug hound this book is tops.
My 11 year old needed some type of basic reference (as well as did I to help him) in his overzealous bug hunts. This book with its pictures was a wonderful book to help him in his quest. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

Best pix
This book has the best pix of any book on tarantulas that I have seen, but as indicated by other reviews, technical info is much better and more reliable in "The Tarantula Keeper's Guide".

Excellent Photos, Good companion to the TKG
This book has excellent color pictures of various species of tarantulas and even has mating pictures. This is an excellent companion to "The Tarantula Keeper's Guide". I say companion because the technical/care information in the TKG is more comprehensive and accurate.

Pics Wonderful, Info not as great
This book has it ups and downs. The good: This book has THE best Pix of any tarantula book I have ever seen. There are pictures of the most of the popular species and pictures of the two most important events in a tarantula's life, molting and mating. Plus they are lamenated. The bad: Some of the info, especially in the begging of the book can caus possible harm to your spiders. Plus, most of it is outdated, particularly on the names of the spiders. I recommend getting this for looking at the pictures and "helping" to identifing you tarantula. But for info on tarantulas, get Stanley and Marguerite Schultz' The Tarantula Keeper's Guide.

This book is Way KewL!
This book is one of the Best for many reasons. The layout is very nice. The pages are of high quality paper..(kinda like laminated). The Pictures are the Best i've ever seen! If there is one thing i love about this book its the pics.. some of the amazing pics in this book include... the purple A.seemani.. A.geniculata.. A very nice picture of the P.regalis, etc etc etc. buy this book..! ... Read more

Book Description

A pioneer of high-speed photography, Stephen Dalton is one of the world's greatest nature photographers. These 250 astonishing images celebrate the birds, insects, mammals and countryside that Dalton appreciates as an artist, a scientist and a lover of wildlife.

The concentrated energy of the visual work is offset by the light touch Dalton brings to the accompanying text. Informative and engaging, he tells of the challenges of adjusting to his subject's schedule rather than following his own. But Dalton's greatest gift is revealing the adaptive genius of some of nature's most familiar creatures.

Secret Worlds features: - Nocturnal predators capturing prey - Frogs, mice, and fleas in mid-leap - The Jesus Lizard walking on water

Naturalists everywhere will be enthralled by this vivid exploration of the hidden worlds that surround us. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Alchemy of Time Frozen, Nature Revealed
Stephen Dalton is a master artist and naturalist of our time. His work produces living treasures of the beauty and wonder of life on Earth, and highlights the need to preserve nature against the destructiveness of human endeavours.

Dalton forces the viewer to stop in time with the subject photographed and see a moment as it can never be seen.

While there is joy and wonder is looking at Dalton's amazing photographs, there is also sadness in knowing that so many of these incredible creatures are going extinct.

Must-have, magnificent photos, fascinating facts
This is absolutely a must-have coffee table book for any nature lover. It is filled with spectacular color photos on glossy paper so clear & vibrant they pop off the page. Dalton's high-speed photography is pure genius.

Bats, birds, ladybugs, butterflies, dragonflies, bees & a vast array of other animals are captured in mid flight. The several frames of a chameleon lashing out its tongue to capture its prey are captivating.

You also get to see numerous frogs & mice as they rest, swim, eat, climb plants, & leap through the air. A few plants such as moss, fungus, liverworts, sedge & an oak seeding are also shown up close.

Captions for each creature give fascinating information on their daily lives, eating habits, & special abilities. Get this book, I promise you won't be disappointed. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

Yawn...
I don't know how this guy managed to make insects boring, but he did. Also, his prose is not at all engaging.

Great story!
At first blush, this might just sound like a book with stories about insects but its so much more than tyhat! The chapters weave into each other, starting in April with the cecropia moth emerging from the cocoon and ending in the last chapter with the cecropia again in hibernation for the winter.Thhroughout the chapeters, the seasons change and life changes with it.Honey bees emerge, insects reproduce, polliation happens, colonies grow, and then fall/winter return and hibernation/preparation for the next generation ensues.Its a really neat book.Also, there's a drawing at the bottom of each page of a moth in flight so if you flick the pages fast its like cartoon moth flying throyugh the air - really neat.The writing is conversational and enjoyable, other neat authors like E.O. Wilson are referenced, there are a few poems/quotes sprinkled in.I learned a lot while ready but was also bitten by the bug to learn even more.I'm fascinated by the change in seasons and all that happens in our natural world!Definitely recommend this book for anyone interested in reading through the seasons from an insects' perspective.Lots of different insects talked about throughout.

Readable, worthwhile
This is the third book by Dr. Waldbauer I've read. I continue to thoroughly enjoy his books. The book is divided into chapters that follow insect activities through a year. Each chapter covers a type of activity that is appropriate for the time of year, such as breeding, getting enough to eat, hiding out, keeping warm (these are my paraphrases, not actual chapter titles).
The book covers a variety of different species. It's extremely readable. Only disadvantages I can see are that it is not organized well for reference, and it may not offer as much depth as you want if you are particularly intrigued with one of the dozens of subjects he discusses. You'll have to go to other sources for an all-in-one-place focus on one species. On the other hand, the book makes no pretense of being a comprehensive reference work--It is a readable overview, and never pretends to be anything else. So if that's what you are looking for, this book will serve very well.

Recommended for anyone with a non-academic interest in the subject.

"It was not until 1989 that humans first communicated
with honey bees through the dancing and buzzing of a robot bee."

Five stars for that sentence all by itself.

Beautifully written, awakening a sense of wonder
This was the first book I'd read devoted to insects, and I was so enthralled that I've gone on to read a good many others on the subject. Still, _Insects through the Seasons_ remains my favorite "bug"book.Waldbauer's prose is clear and yet has a lyricism that surprised me. He packs an incredible amount of interesting information into the book,yet I was never overwhelmed.Best of all, his enthusiasm is infectious. ... Read more

Book Description

This definitive work by world-renowned bee authority Eva Crane offers a fascinating account of bees and their complex relations with both humans and animals. Comprehensive, absorbing, and lavishly illustrated, this scholarly, yet accessible volume explores how bees, honey and other bee products have been gathered and utilized throughout the world.

Beginning with the rock paintings of the Mesolithic cave dwellers, readers will learn about the variety of methods used by human beekeepers, the stratagems used by animal honey-hunters, and the multitude of products humans have derived from bees. The first in-depth book on the subject, the World History of Beekeeping and Honey-Hunting is the ultimate work on bees for scholars in biology and the life sciences, professional and amateur beekeepers, and anyone who is interested in bees or the collection of honey. ... Read more

Book Description

A fun-filled field guide into the creepy-crawly world of the bugs of Washington and Oregon. Learn about 125 of the coolest bugs you might encounter in the great outdoors of the Northwest. John Acorn, an avid "bugster" and host of the popular television series The Nature Nut, supplies lively text that evokes each species' character. Respected artist and naturalist Ian Sheldon has created brilliant illustrations that bring each bug to life. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Honeybee behaviour
Honey bees are among the most complex of the extant protostomes, and their behavior and central nervous system has been studied in some detail. This easy to read reference describes beekeeping, the life cycle of the bees and the bee hive, communication by pheromes, communication by sound, communication by the bee's 'dance language', navigation by a sun 'compass', navigation by a polarized light 'compass', navigation by landmarks, possible navigation by a magnetic 'compass', flower learning and memory, matching from memory, visual memory, and the possibility of limited insight in bees.

A surprisingly interesting study of bees and animal learning
The authors, in laying out an engaging and thorough discussion of bees, their 'honey dance', and other elements of highly structured language, illuminate the broader question of how animals experience and learn. The folklore -- and wonderful pictures -- will make this book a pleasure for nature lovers, while students of language and of the scientific process will enjoy it for the window it provides into how classical experiments are used to probe cognition and learning. Despite the apparently narrow scope of the title, I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys popular-press books on science: there's a lot of wonderful material here, and its not hard to get at and enjoy. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

easy to use and informative
I just got this guide last month. It has bright attractive illustrations and was an immediate hit with my kids and me. We didn't know much to start with, but this guide has a picture index in the front that makes it easy to find the mystery bug. For us, it helps that we don't need to know taxonomy. Because it is region specific, we don't have to waste a lot of time wading through all the bugs we're unlikely to see anyway--I assume this is something like the "top 100" of local bugs, so just about everything I see in the book looks familiar. I also like that the book provides a little narrative about each bug, not just its name, so we feel like we're really learning something. I suspect it's not big enough for all the bugs we'll come across, but so far it is serving us well by wetting our appetite. ... Read more

Book Description

The definitive guide to the world's most recognized butterfly.

Monarch butterflies are widely distributed around the world. The two most distinct populations are located in North America -- one to the east and the other to the west of the Rocky Mountains.

Their wide distribution, coupled with their vivid orange, white and black coloring makes the monarch the most recognizable butterfly. Regrettably, in recent years, ecological changes -- specifically the loss of its feeding grounds -- are threatening the monarch's existence.

The Last Monarch Butterfly provides a thorough and essential overview of these delightful creatures and helps readers to understand their plight. The book documents the monarch's life cycle to provide a clear understanding of its natural condition including its migratory nature. Easy-to-understand text is illustrated with thirty bright, colorful photographs.

The western butterfly winters in California and the eastern butterfly winters in Mexico. Natural disasters such as a recent cold snap in Mexico imperil the already depleted monarch populations. Areas in California that once hosted the monarch are now being used for residential and industrial development. Even the vast fields of flowering weeds that supported the monarch in the northern states are depleted for new development.

The Last Monarch Butterfly is the definitive environmental reference on this endangered species. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

THE insects field guide
The most detailed and complete field guide on insects I've ever seen....plenty of color drawings and descriptions on morphology, habitat, ecology and ethology of each species. If you love the nature you can'tloose it! ... Read more

Book Description

Composed of sixty-nine boxes, Jacques Kerchache's astonishing insect collection is illustrated here for the first time. It is part of a tradition that dates back at least to the Renaissance, when, spurred on by the great voyagers and navigators, collectors created curio rooms in which fauna, flora, minerals, fossils, skulls, shells, and insects were classified and arranged. Claude Levi-Strauss rightly observed: "A bird, a beetle, a butterfly invite the same rapt contemplation that we reserve for a Tintoretto or a Rembrandt." In this entomological collection, it is Nature the artist that holds sway, transforming each insect into a work of art. Distributed on behalf of the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain. 85 color illustrations. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Beautiful, beautiful photos...BUT
The photographs in this book are magnificent. It succeeds as an art book.

But no information is provided about the insects, not even their names. If you wonder if you recognize an insect, there is no way for you to check. If you see an insect that you'd like to learn more about, too bad. If you'd like to use the book as a teaching tool, you can't unless you're able to identify the insects yourself. I find this to be a huge flaw.

There are other books available that have just as beautiful photos of insects but that have the courtesy to identify what you are looking at.

Beauty under the microscope!
Unbelievable it is how much beauty, intricacy, and bewilderment one can find in the small creatures around us. They fly and crawl past us, and seldom do some of us realize the magnificence of a world that goes by so easily unperceived. This book is a great request for us to pay more attention. To gaze more intently and appreciate what the hand of nature has spawned - beings equally or far more complex than ourselves. More so than we would like to admit! What bewilderment we would find if we could shrink to their size, wear their cloaks of colour, and fit into their universe.... ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Excellent for benthic macroinvertebrate monitoring
This excellent little wire-bound book is particularly easy to use in the field--and it lies flat on a lab bench.The book provides brief sections on introduction to aquatic insects, marine insects, frequently encountered non-insects, insect morphology, collecting and preserving, use of aquatic insects in water quality work, a section on how to use the book, and references.The bulk of the book consists of a key to orders followed by a series of keys to families or, in some cases, subfamilies.For the benefit of amateurs like myself, drawings are numerous and clear and a good deal of information about distribution, ecology, and appearance is provided in the keys.If one is getting started in benthic macroinvertebrate surveys or has students doing high school science projects on aquatic insects, this little book provides a lot of bang for the buck.

Aquatic insects and biological monitoring
Lehmkuhl does an excellent job with discription of life cycles, morphology, and how insects are used in biological monitoring. The bibliography is extensive and organized by major family and order. This is a good text for beginning aquatic biologists and teachers that want to start pollution monitoring of streams and rivers, however I would have liked to have seen more detail on collection methods, specifically kick net methods. Kick nets are build specifically for this method of collection and provide a better means than the "window screen" method described. It would have also been nice to go into the methodology of where and how to perform sampling. The only other improvement I would make would to have included more drawings of entire insects(ie. various genera and species of Plecoptera) and some photographs would have been a nice supplement as well. Otherwise a very well done and helpful text.

Thomas Smith Environmental Technology Instructor River Bend Career and Tech. Center ... Read more

Book Description

Reviews (1)

Fun for children - no matter the age
All of the "tattoo" books in this series are wonderful! The tattoos are beautifully detailed, easy to put on, and stay for a few days. They are the best quality we have found, at about a third the price. This is one of our favorites because everyone in the family enjoys butterflies. Body art is terrific fun, for children as well as adults. My son liked many in the series when he was about two and years later continues to like them, changing subject as his interests change.

The butterfly set is especially beautiful, and I have sported them on ankles, shoulders, etc. They make great party favors for children's birthdays, fun gifts for grownups, and a rainy day activity too. Enjoy. ... Read more

Book Description

Often referred to as the butterflies of the beetle world, the active and brilliantly colored tiger beetles are the most recognizable and sought-after group of beetles in the field.

Countless hours of intensive field work culminate in this illustrated and comprehensive field guide to tiger beetles in Florida and the eastern United States. For every species, Paul Choate provides color photographs of living specimens and habitats (227 in all) taken in the wild, biological notes, and 70 detailed maps indicating the species' distribution ranges. A traditional identification key is included for those wishing to identify specimens using morphological criteria. The guide also contains an overview of the effects of Florida's geological history on the present-day distributions of the tiger beetles, a brief section for nature photographers, a discussion of the current conservation issues regarding these beetles, and an extensive reference list for those wishing to delve into more detail.

Unlike previous field guides, which have been both technical in nature and limited in range, Choate's guide serves both specialist and nonspecialist alike in identifying tiger beetles throughout Florida and the eastern United States. Beetle enthusiasts and collectors, entomologists, biologists, naturalists, and nature photographers will find this guide a must for the identification, collection, and research of these prized beetles. ... Read more