Underland by Robert Macfarlane

$45.00 AUD

Category: Nature

The highly anticipated new book from the internationally bestselling, prize-winning author of Landmarks, The Lost Words and The Old Ways Discover the hidden worlds beneath our feet... In Underland, Robert Macfarlane takes us on a journey into the worlds beneath our feet. From the ice-blue depths of G reenland's glaciers, to the underground networks by which trees communicate, from Bronze Age burial chambers to the rock art of remote Arctic sea-caves, this is a deep-time voyage into the planet's past and future. Global in its geography, gripping in its voice and haunting in its implications, Underland is a work of huge range and power, and a remarkable new chapter in Macfarlane's long-term exploration of landscape and the human heart. 'Macfarlane has invented a new kind of book, really a new genre entirely' The Irish Times 'He is the great nature writer, and nature poet, of this generation' Wall Street Journal 'Macfarlane has shown how utterly beautiful a brilliantly written travel book can still be' Observer onThe Old Ways 'Irradiated by a profound sense of wonder... Few books give such a sense of enchantment; it is a book to give to many, and to return to repeatedly' Independent onLandmarks  ...Show more

City of Trees: Essays on Life, Death and the Need for a Forest by Sophie Cunningham

$24.99 AUD

Category: Nature

How do we take in the beauty of our planet while processing the losses? What trees can survive in the city? Which animals can survive in the wild? How do any of us-humans, animals, trees-find a forest we can call home? In these moving, thought-provoking essays Sophie Cunningham considers the meaning of trees and our love of them. She chronicles the deaths of both her fathers, and the survival of P-22, a mountain lion in Griffith Park, Los Angeles; contemplates the loneliness of Ranee, the first elephant in Australia; celebrates the iconic eucalyptus and explores its international status as an invasive species. City of Trees is a powerful collection of nature, travel and memoir writing set in the context of global climate change. It meanders through, circles around and sometimes faces head on the most pressing issues of the day. It never loses sight of the trees. ...Show more

The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlick

$19.99 AUD

Category: Nature

Extraordinary Insects: Weird. Wonderful. Indispensable. The Ones Who Run Our World by Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson

$32.99 AUD

Category: Nature

A journey into the weird, wonderful and truly astonishing lives of the small but mighty creatures who keep the world turning. Out of sight, underfoot, unseen beyond fleeting scuttles or darting flights, insects occupy a hidden world, yet are essential to sustaining life on earth. Insects influence our e cosystem like a ripple effect on water. They arrived when life first moved to dry land, they preceded – and survived – the dinosaurs, they outnumber the grains of sand on all the world's beaches, and they will be here long after us. Working quietly but tirelessly, they give us food, uphold our ecosystems, can heal our wounds and even digest plastic. They could also provide us with new solutions to the antibiotics crisis, assist in disaster zones and inspire airforce engineers with their flying techniques. But their private lives are also full of fun, intrigue and wonder –musical mating rituals; house-hunting for armies of beetle babies; metamorphosing into new characters; throwing parties in fermenting sap; cultivating fungi for food; farming smaller species for honey dew and always ensuring that what is dead is decomposed, ready to become life once again. Here, we will discover life and death, drama and dreams, all on a millimetric scale. Like it or not, Earth is the planet of insects, and this is their extraordinary story. ...Show more

2040: A Household Handbook for the Regeneration by Damon Gameau

$34.99 AUD

Category: Nature | Reading Level: 4 Non Fiction

'You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.' Buckminster Fuller Like most of us, Damon Gameau has spent most of his adult years overwhelmed into inaction by the problem of climate change and its devastating ef fects on the planet. But when Damon became a father, he knew he couldn't continue to look away. So he decided to do what he does best, and tell a story. And the story became an imagining of what the world could look like in 2040, if we all decided to start doing things differently, right now. The result is the era-defining documentary 2040 - a meticulously researched plea for the adoption of community-building, energy-generating, forest-renewing, ocean-replenishing measures that science tells us will reset our planet's health, drive our economies and improve lives across the globe. 2040: A Household Handbook for the Regeneration shows us how we can stitch this magnificent vision into everyday life by engaging in activities such as cooking, shopping, gardening, sharing, working and teaching our kids. It shows us that climate change is a practical problem that can be tackled by each of us, one small step at a time, and that we can make a genuine difference - if we know what to do. Brimming with practical wisdom and even 50 delicious recipes, 2040: A Household Handbook for the Regeneration empowers you to become the change you want to see in the world. ...Show more

The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future by David Wallace-Wells

$29.99 AUD

Category: Nature

The signs of climate change are unmistakable even today, but the real transformations have hardly begun. We've been taught that warming would be slow-but, barring very dramatic action, each of these impacts is likely to arrive within the length of a new mortgage signed this year. What will it be like t o live on a pummeled planet? What will it do to our politics, our economy, our culture and sense of history? And what explains the fact we have done so little to stop it? These are not abstract questions but immediate and pressing human dramas, dilemmas and nightmares. In The Uninhabitable Earth, David Wallace-Wells undertakes a new kind of storytelling and a new kind of social science to explore the era of human history on which we have just embarked. ...Show more

Owls: Journeys Around the World by David Hollands

$35.00 AUD

Category: Nature

David Hollands first became aware of owls as a young boy upon hearing the quavering hoot of the Tawny Owl which lived, out of sight, in the woods near his home. Their secrets remained undiscovered but then he came across some spectral Barn Owls in an ancient English barn. These were the first owls that he had watched at close quarters and photographed in the night. It was a magical experience and, by then, that first awareness had progressed and become a lifelong passion. David Hollands came to Australia in 1961and for a while, the demands of running a medical practice put a brake on other activities. Nevertheless, his fascination for birds, owls and photography could never remain submerged for long and, in 1999, he completed 'Birds of the Night' - a comprehensive study in words and photographs of Australia's owls, frogmouths and nightjars. However, David's owl studies continued. There were owls to be pursued around the world and he set out to find and photograph as many as possible. By his own admission, he has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. The author's love of birds extends beyond owls and he has also written books on Australia's Birds of Prey and on Kingfishers and Kookaburras. All three books won the Whitley Award for the Best Illustrated Australian Natural History book of that year. ...Show more

Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What they Teach Us by Frans De Waal

$32.99 AUD

Category: Nature

Frans de Waal has spent four decades at the forefront of animal research. Following up on the best-selling Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, which investigated animal intelligence, Mama's Last Hug delivers a fascinating exploration of the rich emotional lives of animals.Mama's Last Hug begins with the death of Mama, a chimpanzee matriarch who formed a deep bond with biologist Jan van Hooff. When Mama was dying, van Hooff took the unusual step of visiting her in her night cage for a last hug. Their goodbyes were filmed and went viral. Millions of people were deeply moved by the way Mama embraced the professor, welcoming him with a big smile while reassuring him by patting his neck, in a gesture often considered typically human but that is in fact common to all primates. This story and others like it form the core of de Waal's argument, showing that humans are not the only species with the capacity for love, hate, fear, shame, guilt, joy, disgust, and empathy.De Waal discusses facial expressions, the emotions behind human politics, the illusion of free will, animal sentience, and, of course, Mama's life and death. The message is one of continuity between us and other species, such as the radical proposal that emotions are like organs: we don't have a single organ that other animals don't have, and the same is true for our emotions. Mama's Last Hug opens our hearts and minds to the many ways in which humans and other animals are connected, transforming how we view the living world around us. ...Show more

Owl Sense by Miriam Darlington

$22.99 AUD

Category: Nature

A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week Longlisted for the Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize 2018 A Guardian Book of the Year 2018 The owl has captivated the human imagination for millennia; as a predator, messenger, emblem of wisdom or portent of doom. Owl Sense tells a new story. On 'owl walks' with her teen age son, Benji, Miriam Darlington begins a quest to identify every European species of this elusive bird. From Britain she travels to Spain, France, Serbia and Finland, and to the frosted borders of the Arctic. Along the way, however, Benji succumbs to a mysterious and disabling illness, and Miriam's endeavour soon becomes entangled with the search for his cure. Bringing the strangeness and magnificence of owls to life, Owl Sense is a book about wildness in nature but also in the unpredictable course of our human lives. ...Show more

Incredible Journeys: Exploring the Wonders of Animal Navigation by David Barrie

$32.99 AUD

Category: Nature

In INCREDIBLE JOURNEYS, award-winning author David Barrie takes us on a tour of the cutting-edge science of animal navigation, where breakthroughs are allowing scientists to unravel, for the first time, how animals as various as butterflies, birds, crustaceans, fish, reptiles and even people find their way. Weaving interviews with leading experts on animal behaviour with the groundbreaking discoveries of Nobel-Prize winning neuroscientists, Barrie shines a light on the astounding skills of animals of every stripe. Dung beetles that steer by the light of the Milky Way. Ants and bees that navigate using patterns of light invisible to humans. Sea turtles, spiny lobsters and moths that find their way using the Earth's magnetic field. Salmon that return to their birthplace by following their noses. Baleen whales that swim thousands of miles while holding a rock-steady course and birds that can locate their nests on a tiny island after crisscrossing an entire ocean. There's a stunning diversity of animal navigators out there, often using senses and skills we humans don't have access to ourselves. For the first time, INCREDIBLE JOURNEYS reveals the wonders of these animals in a whole new light. ...Show more

The Bumblebee Flies Anyway - A Year of Gardening And (wild)life by Kate Bradbury

$22.99 AUD

Category: Nature

'Wonderfully intense and honest - a poignant manual of how to grow hope against the odds.' Chris Packham, TV presenter and author of Fingers in the Sparkle JarFinding herself in a new home in Brighton, Kate Bradbury sets about transforming her decked, barren backyard into a beautiful wildlife garden. Sh e documents the unbuttoning of the earth and the rebirth of the garden, the rewilding of a tiny urban space. On her own she unscrews, saws and hammers the decking away, she clears the builders' rubble and rubbish beneath it, and she digs and enriches the soil, gradually planting it up with plants she knows will attract wildlife. She erects bird boxes and bee hotels, hangs feeders and grows nectar- and pollen-rich plants, and slowly brings life back to the garden.But while she's doing this Kate's neighbours continue to pave and deck their gardens locking them away, the wildlife she tries to save is further threatened, and she feels she's fighting an uphill battle. Is there any point in gardening for wildlife when everyone else is drowning the land in poison and cement? Sadly, events take Kate away from her garden, and she finds herself back home in Birmingham where she grew up, travelling the roads she used to race down on her bike in the eighties, thinking of the gardens and wildlife she loved, witnessing more land lost beneath paving stones. If the dead could return, what would they say about the land we have taken, the ancient routes we have carved up, the wildlife we have lost? ...Show more

Curlew Moon by Mary Colwell

$19.99 AUD

Category: Nature

Curlews are Britain's largest wading bird, known for their evocative calls which embody wild places; they provoke a range of emotions that many have expressed in poetry, art and music. A bird stands alone on the edge of a mudflat. Its silhouette is unmistakable. A plump body sits atop long, stilty legs. The long neck arcs into a small head, which tapers further into a long curved bill. The smooth, convex outlines of this curlew are alluring. They touch some ancestral liking we all have for shapes that are round and smooth. Over the last 22 years numbers in the UK have halved; the curlew is one of our most endangered birds. With 25 per cent of the world's curlews living in the UK, this is nothing short of a disaster. The curlew is showing all the signs of being the next Great Auk. In Curlew Moon, Mary Colwell takes us on a journey from the West coast of Ireland to the east coast of England, on her quest to help raise awareness for this beautiful bird's plight. Her 500-mile walk on foot starts in the early spring, when birds are first arriving on their breeding grounds in the west of Ireland, walking through to Wales, when they incubate their eggs. She makes her way through England to coincide with the time when the chicks are hatching, and six weeks after setting out she arrives in East Anglia as the fledglings are beginning to try out their wings. Finishing on the east coast, she marks the place where many curlews come to spend the winter. This evocative book chronicles Colwell's impressive journey, weaving a gentle tale of discovery interspersed with the natural history of this most impressive of birds that hasfascinated us for millennia - and so desperately needs our help. ...Show more