Supplier Interview – Hoopoe

Supplier interview with Unitura

Unitura are experts in nature-inclusive construction and renovation who provide off-the-shelf solutions to projects that require roosting and habitat mitigation. They are involved in the design and manufacture of their own product lines, including bat boxes, bird boxes and insect hotels. They are specialists in green architecture in the form of green roofs or facades and provide bespoke services for nature inclusivity projects.

We recently had the opportunity to talk to the founders of Unitura, Sicco, Robert-Jan and Henk, about the company, their product range, what they hope for the future of the business and more.

Firstly, can you tell us about what inspired the establishment of Unitura?

The founding of Unitura stemmed from our shared interests. Prior to founding Unitura, Sicco and Henk were already engaged in providing ecological advice, while Robert Jan was primarily involved in the building sector. During a casual gathering, we brainstormed and landed on the concept of bat boxes. At that time, there was limited knowledge about such products in the market, presenting us with an intriguing challenge.

We started out quite simply – making and painting bat boxes in a small, rented office in a farmhouse. During the week, we focused on consultancy work and at the weekend we focused on producing bat boxes. We noticed that more was possible than just bat boxes and started to expand our range. It was no longer just about bats, but a complete range of in-field, nature-inclusive building.

How has the idea of nature-inclusive building been received since the company was founded, and how important do you think this is for the future of the planet?

Since our company was founded, the idea of nature-inclusive building has mainly been driven by legislation. However, we are now seeing a shift where it is becoming more of an integral part of construction projects and people are recognising its broader importance. We expect that in the future, it will become a standard component in the construction industry, particularly in the Netherlands where we see nature-inclusive building gaining more traction.

A few years ago, green buildings were rare, but now architects are increasingly incorporating them into their designs. This rapid development in the Netherlands is due to both political and corporate recognition of its urgency. Governments are implementing more regulations and companies are eager to adapt to these changes.

You have a very wide range of products on offer, from nest boxes, insect hotel and seeds, to equipment needed to create live, biodiverse green roofs. Can you tell us a bit more about your bestselling products?

Our best-selling products are the wood-concrete built-in facilities for birds and bats. Our range includes an extensive series of modular bat boxes that can be endlessly expanded and exchanged. This allows you to put together your bat boxes according to your own wishes. These boxes are specifically designed for bats that live in buildings. We also offer various built-in facilities for birds, including swifts and House Sparrows, which can be easily integrated into the masonry.

How did the introduction of the Nature Conservation Act in 2017 affect the design and manufacturing of your products?

The introduction of the Nature Conservation Act in

2017 likely impacted the design and production of our products. Similar legislation already existed in the Netherlands prior to this. At the moment, according to Dutch law, it is mandatory to conduct ecological research on protected species and their habitats before construction activities can commence. As a solution, a Species Management Plan (SMP) is now in place. An SMP outlines the protected species present in an area and the threats they face, whether across the entire municipality, in specific neighbourhoods, or within areas earmarked for significant sustainability or construction activities. It also describes the actions needed to protect, restore, or even increase the population of species.

For our company, this may entail adjusting our designs and manufacturing processes to comply with the regulations set forth in the SMP. For instance, in the insulation industry, our designs must account for specific insulation values to ensure that our product is suitable for use in various construction projects, such as installing nest-boxes in cavity walls.

I think the live, biodiverse roofs and building facades that you create are a fantastic idea and look stunning, however they are sadly quite uncommon here in the UK. Can you talk us through how you create them, why they should be used instead of a flat roof and how they benefit the environment?

Our green roofs offer various benefits, including reducing heat stress, significant water buffering capacity and CO2 reduction – they are also well-suited for renovation, as they are made with cassettes (HDPE units containing pre-cultivated wildflowers and herbs used to make green roofing). Within these cassettes, we use native species that contribute to promoting biodiversity and support local flora and fauna.

The process begins with the manufacturing of cassettes, which are then placed on the roof. These cassettes are produced by specialised nurseries and contain a substrate in which we sow native seeds from our partner organisation, De Bolderik. After approximately 12 weeks, the cassettes are ready to be installed on the roof.

Do you have any new products on the horizon that you can tell us about?

We continuously work on developing new products. We recently launched a new sensor specifically designed for detecting incoming and outgoing bats. With an active lifespan of two years, this sensor enables long-term monitoring. Users can easily view and download the sensor results via the companion app.

What is the hope for the future of Unitura?

Our aim is to broaden our model into a complete supplier of nature-inclusive solutions, integrating green elements such as green facades and green roofs. Moreover, we are firmly committed to expanding our presence in the international market. We are curious what the future will bring us!

Unitura Modular Bat Tubes

This modular bat tube from Unitura is a highly versatile built-in solution for bat mitigation and integration into a wall. Each tube has a single or multiple large crevices with a sloped entrance hole to accommodate bats leaving and entering the site and promote the runoff of water away from the interior of the tube. The tubes come in single, double and triple crevice layers and with/without an entryway. They can be mixed and matched completely depending on the design specification of the build and built as large or as small as needed.

Unitura Tall External Bat Box

This single crevice external bat box from Unitura provides a suitable and durable roost for crevice-dwelling bat species. Made from thermally stable and resilient woodconcrete this bat box can be mounted to any external walls where a roost may be needed. MULTI-MONTI fixings are included and are designed to be used without a Rawl plug. The screw anchor is approved for installation in cracked and uncracked concrete, as well as a whole range of other building materials.

Unitura External Swift Box

This external single-cavity swift box has been designed as a long-lasting nest box for swifts. Constructed from woodconcrete this swift box has a sloping roof to provide drainage and prevent dirt streaks from forming on the external wall. These boxes come with all the required fixings and an instruction card for easy assembly.

Soffit and Fascia Swift Box

These under-eaves swift nest boxes are a subtle and attractive way of providing swifts roosting opportunities in your eaves and soffits while remaining durable and secure for both the home and birds. The roost is made of both a wooden concrete entrance stone and an FSC plywood box, with ideally only the entrance stone being exposed to the elements, improving the durability and longevity of the box. The box is designed to be mounted in multiple directions depending on the angle of mounting and the shape and angle of the soffit/fascia.

Unitura Little Owl Box

Designed to provide a secure nesting solution for Little Owls, whilst excluding unwanted species, this nestbox has an entryway vestibule to help discourage Stone Martens, a large open nesting space with a removable roof and drainage/ventilation holes in the base.

Wilder Sensing: An Interview with Geoff Carss

Wilder Sensing, founded in 2021, is bringing innovative techniques to conservation, providing additional insights into biodiversity. This promising tech start-up featured on Springwatch this Wednesday (12th June), showcasing the applications of this innovation. We had the opportunity to chat with Geoff Carss, CEO of Wilder Sensing, on the organisation, its role in conservation and the future of technology in the field.

Can you share with us why Wilder Sensing was founded and what the company is involved in?

Wilder Sensing was founded to ensure that anyone can collect high-quality, long-term biodiversity data. There are many different ways of doing this, but we focus on sound. By recording 24/7 for weeks, or even months, you can build up a very rich picture of what is present in an environment. The technology we use is low-cost with limited bias, and it is easy to use, even for non-professionals. It’s not perfect, especially because we are focusing on birds at the moment. Not all birds make much noise – some make very subtle noises which we can’t pick up – but for most species it works well.

Can you tell us about the capabilities of Wilder Sensing technology and the insights that it can provide for a given environment?

We work with our customers to agree on survey patterns and how many recorders should be deployed on each site. The customer uploads their audio files to our website, and once they have arrived, we automatically process them using machine learning. It takes us around 20 seconds to process an hour-long file, and we can process many in parallel. During this, the technology checks every three seconds to see if a sound has been detected – every sound gets a species match, and a probability is assigned. So, for instance, the technology will be 92% certain that it has detected a Robin. Through this, we can give a species richness assessment, which is a species list at the moment. Our technology is currently unable to tell us how many individuals there are in a given space – there could be one very noisy bird, or ten very quiet ones.

However, bioacoustic surveying technology does not remove the need for ground truthing. It is still important to get the baseline. Ecologists will find species that we don’t pick up. And the converse is true as well. We can find 20-30% more species when combining acoustic and traditional surveys. We are also working on other approaches for the future, like triangulation, which could identify exactly where a sound is coming from.

Over 45,000 records were species-matched in the Peruvian Amazon. Image by Wilder Sensing.Can you tell us about the current projects that you are involved in and the role that bioacoustics played in conservation?

We’re involved with a whole raft of different projects. We are working with environmental consultancies, Wildlife Trusts and NGO’s using acoustic technology for long-term surveying. Wendling Beck in Norfolk is a site that we have been working on for around 18 months. We realised that Skylarks are using one small part of the site, but you don’t see this until you look at the data – when you are just walking around, you don’t make that connection. If you look at some species, you might think that you have a ubiquitous habitat, but when you start looking at the distribution of birds and their calls, you may find that there are many times more calls in one part of the site. If you were to redevelop an area, you would probably lose some species altogether, but going into a development project, knowing that’s a likely ecological consequence, is really important and that is why acoustic technology is so valuable.

What is the future for AI in conservation? Where do you think its applications could take us over the coming years??

I think it has a lot to contribute. To get good, accurate data you need highly skilled ecologists, people that really understand bird sound – it takes years to build those skills. I think the role will change so that ecologists will get more involved in survey design and interpreting the data to understand the consequences of a project. It becomes much more evidence-based and more quantitative. We have some customers who deploy up to 20 recorders, and you can get a quarter of a million acoustic records on each device. With that amount of data, you can start to ask different questions and we can see all kinds of behaviours that we couldn’t see before.

In the South-west, some farmland was purchased to develop into allotments and after digging, they found that Skylarks were nesting on-site. Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) does not look at species, so a habitat survey would not record Skylarks in the area. If acoustic recorders had been deployed on site, ecologists would know they were present – so well-rounded data will also help developers plan better, mitigating issues from the onset of construction. The BNG survey was designed to be consistent and relatively easy to use, and species surveys could prove to be more difficult because of inconsistencies and methodologies etc. With AI we can move to a new level of understanding. If you just stick the recorder out, it is consistent in how it works and removes bias.

Over 4,000 calls were detected from Meadow Pipits at Wendling Beck. Image by Kev Chapman via Flickr.

For those interested in bioacoustics, it is worth noting that you will be holding webinars from July. What can we expect from these sessions?

We have three sessions lined up. The first one is on 7th July and is about measuring nature using sound. It’ll dig into both how the technology works and how it compares against other methods, and hopefully we’ll have an open discussion around its strengths and weaknesses. The session is intended for people who are interested in the subject, and we will go through some examples.

This will be followed by two in the autumn, which are more technical and are perhaps more suited to professional ecologists. These sessions will be touching on some of the technology behind Wilder Sensing and some of the ways it should and shouldn’t be used.

What is Wilder Sensing hoping to achieve over the next decade?

I am hoping to move onto other taxa, the obvious ones being insects and bats. We would also like to look at triangulation as well – if we can triangulate how birds and bats are using a landscape, we can use this to help inform better environmental management. I think this data will be used with other environmental data in the future. People doing nature restoration or project planning need to understand the water quality, air quality, the climate etc. to get a better environmental outcome. And even forward-looking companies, we can look at their supply chain as well.

An acoustic sensor deployed at Honeygar Farm. Image by Wilder Sensing.

Increasingly the media are reporting on the quietening of British soundscapes, a symptom of the biodiversity and climate crisis we are facing. How do you think Wilder Sensing will adapt to an increasingly quiet environment? Will technology need to adapt to keep up?

Wilder Sensing technology will quantify exactly what is happening in the biodiversity crisis. I have a copy of the iconic Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, which was published 60 years ago, and we haven’t learned from that. I think this type of technology will hold a mirror up to people to show exactly what is going on. I would love to get a good quality recording from 50 years ago, maybe two or three hours of dawn chorus in woodland, and go back to the same time of year in the same place (assuming it still exists) and compare it. Showing exactly that this is the difference in diversity.

To find out more about the innovative work by Wilder Sensing, their blog features some interesting case studies on the applications of their technology and they are also active on LinkedIn. For more information on Wilder Sensing and their product, email info@wildersensing.com.

British Wildlife Collection: interview with series editor Katy Roper

The British Wildlife Collection is a series of beautifully presented books on all aspects of British natural history. Since the series began in 2012, it has covered such diverse topics as mushrooms, meadows and mountain flowers, and books have been written by some of Britain’s finest writers and experts in their field. Filled with beautiful images, these wide-ranging and well-researched titles are a joy for any naturalist who is passionate about British wildlife and landscapes.

Katy Roper is a Senior Commissioning Editor at Bloomsbury Publishing and is responsible for the British Wildlife Collection. She recently took some time to chat with us about this excellent series; how it began, what makes it stand out from others of its kind and what we can expect from the collection over the next year. Keep reading for the full conversation with Katy, and browse the full British Wildlife Collection at nhbs.com.

Firstly, could you tell us a little bit about yourself; what you do and what your involvement is with the British Wildlife Collection?

I’m a Senior Commissioning Editor in the wildlife team at Bloomsbury Publishing. The British Wildlife Collection is one of the lists I’m lucky enough to look after; I’m responsible for signing up new books with authors and then seeing them through to the point at which they go off to the printer. Being immersed in these books means that I’m always learning something new: from the surprising fact that saltmarsh occurs as far inland as Staffordshire, through to how to successfully use a pooter to collect ants (without inhaling live insects!).

Published in 2012, the first title in the series was Mushrooms by Peter Marren. Could you tell us more about how the British Wildlife Collection initially came about?

Yes, the series was conceived by Andrew Branson who founded and, for 25 years, ran the publication of the excellent British Wildlife magazine. I believe that Andrew’s intention was to produce a series of seminal books that would capture the essence of the magazine in terms of being informative, well-written and thought-provoking whilst providing the author the space to explore their chosen subject in detail and develop the overall narrative.

For anyone unfamiliar with the books from this collection, how would you describe them and who do you consider to be their intended audience?

The series covers all aspects of British natural history and we encourage our authors to cover elements of ecology, history, management, conservation and culture; in other words, to explore the human relationship with their particular subject. The books are written in a way that we hope appeals to a wide readership, from academics and conservation professionals through to enthusiastic amateur naturalists and people who simply want to know more about the British countryside and its inhabitants.

All the books in the series are incredibly well-researched and comprehensive. How long does it typically take to go from conception to publication for a single title?

It varies depending on the author and their other commitments, but I’d say it typically takes around three years from the date the contract is signed until the book hits the shelves. I think our record for the shortest time is 13 months (I won’t tell you the longest!).

The books are beautifully produced and printed and, without exception, are authored by the most well-respected experts in their field. It is no surprise that they have rapidly become collectors’ items for so many British naturalists. What do you think makes these monographs stand out from others of their type?

The series is relatively new and is still evolving, but our ultimate aim is to build an indispensable reference source on all aspects of our wildlife by commissioning some of our finest writers and leading experts to write accessible and engaging books that are then carefully designed to incorporate hundreds of carefully chosen photographs and illustrations to bring the text to life. We hope that our readers come away from them, as one reviewer put it, ‘better-informed than ever, but also hugely entertained’. Oh, and they each feature a beautiful specially commissioned cover artwork by the peerless Carry Akroyd.

Finally, are you able to give us any information as to what subjects we can expect to be covered in the next year or so, or is this a closely guarded secret?

Hedges by Robert Wolton is coming out in February this year, and beyond that we’re excited to be welcoming Peter Marren back to the series with a book entitled Rare Plants. He’ll be followed by Trevor Dines with Urban Plants and David Goode with Bogs.

All books in the British Wildlife Collection are available from nhbs.com. Please contact our customer services team if you would like to set up a standing order for this series – this will ensure that you automatically receive each new title as soon as it is published.

Supplier interview with Faunus Nature Creations

Faunus Nature Creations is an ecological design agency established in 2018 as a subsidiary of NatuurInclusief. They focus on designing, building and selling fauna facilities to create nature-inclusive urban living environments and are widely recognised for their creative nest boxes. Most of their products are made in-house and they work closely with their suppliers and partners to ensure both functionality and beautiful design.

We had the opportunity to speak with Jarno Beijk, the founder of Faunus Nature Creations, about the company, their range of nest boxes and plans for the future.

What inspired the creation of Faunus Nature Creations?

Faunus wood concrete General Purpose bat box in black. — Faunus General Purpose Bat Box.

Faunus Nature Creations (FNC) was founded in 2018 as a business unit part of ecological consulting agency NatuurInclusief. At NatuurInclusief we regularly had to deal with mitigation projects as compensation for bat roosts getting disturbed. During field checks of these bat boxes, we discovered that the quality of the materials used were rapidly deteriorating. They did not meet any of the quality requirements and longevity that we wanted and expected from the bat boxes. From this moment the only solution we saw was to roll up our sleeves and design and build better nest boxes ourselves. Currently we are doing this with a team of ecologists, designers, engineers and architects.

Could you tell us about the range of boxes produced by Faunus and which animals they are suitable for?

In the beginning, our main focus was on roost boxes for bats, and nest boxes for House Sparrows and Swifts. The reason behind this choice is because they are the most strictly protected species by law. Fortunately, there is increasing awareness of building and designing in a more nature-inclusive manner, which means that there is increasing interest in nest boxes for other species as well. This includes species such as Kestrels, Storks, insects, and ground dwelling mammals etc.

Integrated wood concrete bird box, Pino model, in a light brick wall with a swift poking its head out of the hole on the left hand side. — Pino built-in swift box.

Many of the boxes you offer are made from wood concrete. Could you tell us some of the benefits of using this material, both for the user and for the animal?

All our fauna facilities are designed with the needs and requirements of the species in mind. Wood concrete has a long lifespan, also the hydrothermal modified wood that we use has a lifespan of more than 20 years. It is therefore mainly down to the preference of the user.

Mario dual chamber wood concrete sparrow terrace box shown on the side of a dark red bricked house. — Mario dual chamber sparrow terrace box.

Wooden facilities are not suitable as a build-in option. For this, the better choice is going for wood concrete or even better for a ceramic option. The latter have the longest longevity.

A great disadvantage of using wood-concrete and ceramics is that they do not lend themselves well for custom work. Therefore, wood is a very good option for custom work. That is why we make custom wooden bat boxes on request in all kinds of shapes and sizes. When customisation is required to be built-in, we make these on the basis of a cement board.

Personally, we think wood is the most beautiful for external use, because it looks more natural, but other people appreciate the concrete look as well. You will not easily find plywood in our collection, because we find this material is insufficiently durable and has too short of a lifespan.

Many of my colleagues have taken a liking to the names of your boxes, for example, Elisa and Gabriella. How do you decide these names?

Three Faunus bat boxes, models Elisa and Gabriella, on the side of a red bricked house during the day with blue sky in the background. — Elisa and Gabriella bat boxes.

Every nest box or new design we develop and offer is a new family member to our collection. Each design therefore deserves a unique name and not just a code or number. The intention was to use the names of people in our team first, but some found it quite embarrassing if they had to promote a nest box that would bear their own name. We have therefore given the names a slightly Spanish twist. So, Roos became Rosita and Eva became Evita. Spanish names also sound more swinging than Dutch names. At the moment we have more models than employees, so we have now arrived at names of relatives, neighbours and friends. Our latest model nest box Milo is named after the newborn son of our colleague Roos. Furthermore, the mammal nest boxes have female names, and the bird nest boxes have male names.

Faunus Brigida bat box below the roof of a brick house on a sunny day. — Brigida bat box.

Have you found that environmental regulations have had an impact on the boxes you sell?

In the Netherlands we have a quite strict Nature Conservation Act. Our authorities require many strict mitigation standards concerning fauna facilities, for example in the form of bat roost boxes and nest boxes. This is a major reason that many of our clients need to buy the products we make. We ourselves are not in favour of this strict legislation, because people will lack intrinsic motivation to do something good for biodiversity in the end. We ourselves believe that you can achieve more for biodiversity if you know how to make people aware and enthusiastic to do something positive for biodiversity. Legislation of this mitigation standards leads to “must do”, enthusiasm leads to “wanting to do”.

Two Elisa bat boxes half way up two ivy covered trees in a woodland in winter with foliage in the foreground. — Elisa bat boxes on woodland trees.

What can you tell us about plans for new products in the future?

Faunus Nature Creations does more than just develop fauna facilities. Of course, we will bring new and improved models to the market, but we also design many large custom facilities for biodiversity, such as designing and building bat towers. We noticed that there is a great need for this as well. Governments and project developers would like to show off that they are doing something great and important to boost biodiversity and they would like to have the label extravagant for that too. We think it’s a sport to combine functionality, quality and aesthetics. Our motto is not without reason: Building for Biodiversity. Let’s create something valuable!

Faunus Products

General Purpose Bat Box

The tree hanging General Purpose Bat Box is designed to suite crevice and cavity dwelling bat species in the UK. Made from wood concrete, this is a durable, long-lasting and breathable bat box offering a thermally stable internal climate for roosting bats and features two entrances, one at the bottom and one on the front.

Elisa Bat Box

The Elisa wood concrete bat box is designed to provide an ideal summer roost and nesting space for a variety of UK bat species. When installed it sits close to the wall to minimise the risk of being knocked off and features a single internal cavity with an entrance hole at the bottom. Supplied without fittings.

Kiki Bat and Swift Hybrid Box

Some swift and bat species can inhabit urban areas and each rely on buildings for roosting and nesting locations. To accommodate for both species, the Kiki hybrid box has four compartments: three for bats and one for swifts. This box can be hung from buildings and provides a suitable habitat for summer roosting.

Pino Built-in Swift Box

Swifts often create nests in cavities and crevices in the eaves of buildings. The Pino built-in nest box is made from durable and breathable wood concrete, providing a stable internal thermal environment for any inhabitants, and is suitable for house sparrows, starlings and other small urban birds.

Faunus bird and bat boxes are available to order from nhbs.com.

Pelagic: Publisher of the Month for May

Pelagic was founded in 2010 to fill the publishing gap in practical books available on ecology and conservation. They publish books for scientists, conservationists, ecologists, wildlife enthusiasts – anyone with a passion for understanding and exploring the natural world. Their books cover ecological survey and evolutionary biology to natural history dictionaries and environmental statistics. With a prodigious amount of recent publishing, it is our great pleasure to announce Pelagic as our Publisher of the Month for May 2019.

New books for 2019

Pelagic have already published a plethora of great titles for 2019, from a call to action to halt biodiversity with Rebirding: Rewilding Britain and its Birds to recording the wildlife in woods with the Woodland Survey Handbook. This follows on from very strong publishing in 2018 with Bat Roosts in Trees continuing to be one of our bestsellers since it’s publication last October.

Pelagic and bat books

With two eagerly awaited bat titles: Is That a Bat? and The Barbastelle Bat Conservation Handbook in preparation and a wealth of bat survey and monitoring books already published, Pelagic are the go-to publisher for Chiroptera.

Other Pelagic books

Pelagic have – in a very short space of time – carved out a niche for themselves in wildlife publishing. A selection of their publishing is divided into series which are continually added to – these include:

Conservation Handbooks: bridging the gap between scientific theory and practical conservation implementation.

Naturalists’ Handbooks: information, covering biology, practical notes on identifying, in the field or in the laboratory, with plates of individual species and line drawings of many of the key identification characteristics.

Data in the Wild: data collection and analysis for for ecologists, includes books on camera trapping, CCTV and remote sensing.

Synopses of Conservation Evidence: The aim of the project is to make scientific evidence more accessible, in turn making practical wildlife and environmental conservation more evidence-based.

In addition to series collections, Pelagic publish many stand-alone books for practical ecologists, such as Habitat Management for Invertebrates and for travelling ornithologists, there’s the recent Where to Watch Guides ensuring you get the most from your wildlife travels.

You can browse all Pelagic publications here.

Field Studies Council: Publisher of the Month

The Field Studies Council (FSC) is the NHBS Publisher of the Month for June.

The FSC publish six diverse, thoroughly researched and constantly expanding series, all of which are geared towards helping naturalists identify and monitor the plants and animals they are interested in.

These include Royal Entomological Society Handbooks, AIDGAP Guides, Fold-out Identification Charts and Chart Packs, Synopses of the British Fauna and Biological Records Centre Atlases.

Fold-out charts — Fold-Out Identification Charts

Fold-Out Identification Charts

The FSC’s range of compact identification charts are designed to assist nature enthusiasts with identifying and naming the fauna and flora they find. The first fold-out identification chart, The Woodland Name Trail was produced in 1994 and, since then, these guides have become the FSC’s best-selling publications.

What makes FSC’s Fold-Out Identification charts stand out are the beautiful and accurate illustrations. Many are illustrated by some of the world’s finest wildlife artists including Richard Lewington, Lizzie Harper, Chris Shields and Mike Langman.

The top five FSC guides at NHBS are:

In 2018, the FSC has added three new fold-out identification charts to their extensive selection:

More recently, the FSC have gathered together some of their most popular fold-out charts into Wildlife Packs. Each pack consists of three or more related charts, together with a card-sized magnifier.

AIDGAP guides

In 1976 The ‘AIDGAP’ (Aids to Identification in Difficult Groups of Animals and Plants) project was started, with the aim of producing user-friendly and reliable field guides which would make identification achievable for those with little taxonomic training.

The most recent addition to the AIDGAP series is an updated edition of the Key to the Earthworms of the UK and Ireland, originally published in 2012.

Paperback | April 2018
£9.99

Browse all AIDGAP Guides

RES Handbooks for the Identification of British Insects

In 2004 FSC started working with the Royal Entomological Society to publish their Handbook series. The aim of these handbooks is to provide illustrated identification keys to the insects of Britain, together with concise morphological, biological and distributional information. These comprehensive books are primarily aimed at experienced users.

The latest addition to this series is RES Handbook, Volume 7, Part 4: The Banchine Wasps (Ichneumonidae: Banchinae) of the British Isles

Paperback | July 2017
£29.99

Browse all RES Handbooks for the Identification of British Insects

Synopses of the British Fauna

In 1991 FSC formed a partnership with the Linnean Society of London to publish their Synopses of the British Fauna series. The first Synopses FSC published was Volume 49, Woodlice and since then, 60 additional volumes have been published.

The latest addition to this series is SBF Volume 61: Marine Gastropods 2: Littorinimorpha and Other, Unassigned, Caenogastropoda

Paperback | October 2017
£56.99

Browse all Synopses of the British Fauna

BRC Atlases

The FSC also publishes Atlases on behalf of the Biological Records Centre (part of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology). Suitable for more experienced users, these Atlases map the distribution of records within Great Britain and Ireland for named groups of animals.

Browse all BRC Atlases

In Preparation

New FSC publications to look out for in 2018 include:

Two new RES Handbooks – Ichneumonid Wasps. and Beetle larvae. Also expected soon is a Water Beetle Atlas for the BRC.

Fold-Out Charts – A new chart covering Invasive Plants is in the early stages of production, whilst the Butterflies Chart is currently being updated to include the Large Blue, Long Tailed Blue, Wood White and the Cryptic Wood White. A second edition of The Caterpillar Chart is also being considered, along with a Field Signs Guide.

The Field Study Council (FSC) is an environmental education charity providing informative and enjoyable opportunities for people of all ages and abilities to discover, explore, and understand the environment.

Their Mission is to bring environmental understanding to all, and their Vision is inspiring environmental understanding through first-hand experience.

*We have no detailed information regarding titles that are ‘in preparation,’ however, you can place a pre-publication order by contacting customer.services@nhbs.com

Please note that pricing in this blog post is correct at the time of publishing (June 2018) and is subject to change at any time.

NatureBureau: Publisher of the Month

NatureBureau are the NHBS Publisher of the Month for May.

Publishing under the imprint of Pisces Publications, they are renowned for beautifully designed, internationally important handbooks and atlases as well as highly localised UK field guides.

Find out more about NatureBureau’s distinguished list of past publications, as well as their upcoming books in this post.

High Standards in Design

NatureBureau’s creative director, Peter Creed; a keen amateur naturalist and photographer with a background in art, was disappointed with the design of many wildlife books and set about creating a new standard in wildlife publishing. The ground-breaking A Comprehensive Guide to Insects of Britain & Ireland (2014) bore witness to Peter’s endeavours and set a new benchmark in style and content.

As well as exceptional production standards, NatureBureau’s well researched and informative content keeps them in high regard with natural history and wildlife enthusiasts, and their books have become treasured and well-used additions to many libraries.

Local, National and International Guides

Working with authors who are passionate about the flora and fauna of their own county, NatureBureau have produced a range of local interest hardbacks, all illustrated with beautiful photography. In 2017 they published both The Butterflies of Sussex and The Bees of Norfolk, followed in 2018 by The Flora of Sussex.

They recently partnered their bestselling A Comprehensive Guide to Insects of Britain & Ireland with A Photographic Guide to Insects of Southern Europe & the Mediterranean. Both books are currently on offer, for a limited time, in our Spring Sale.

Pocket Guides

Their popular series of photographic pocket guides for beginners use non-technical language and include high-quality photos to make identification in the field as simple as possible. Just published for summer 2018 is A Guide to Finding Bees in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.

Celebrating 30 years

As NatureBureau approach their 30th year, they are continuing to expand their range of titles by publishing The Nature of the Malverns: An Ancient Landscape Steeped in Wildlife and Oxfordshire’s Threatened Plants: A Register of Rare and Scarce Species.

Other books currently in preparation* and expected over the next few years include:

• Atlas of Britain & Ireland’s Larger Moths (for Butterfly Conservation) – in preparation for publication early 2019
• Life cycles of the British and Irish Butterflies (author Peter Eeles) – in preparation for publishing late 2019/early 2020
• The Bumblebee Book (author Nick Owens) – in preparation for publishing in late 2019
• Moths of the West Midlands – in preparation for publishing later 2019

Also, building on the success of their two best-selling insect guides, A Comprehensive Guide to Insects of Britain & Ireland [2014] and A Photographic Guide to Insects of Southern Europe and the Mediterranean [2017] NatureBureau are now planning a companion volume of non-insect terrestrial invertebrates: ‘Spiders and Other Mini-Beasts’.

*We have no detailed information regarding titles that are ‘in preparation,’ however, you can place a pre-publication order by contacting customer.services@nhbs.com

NatureBureau also offer ecology services alongside a unique graphic design and print management department for nature-related publications. Their clients range from local wildlife trusts to international NGOs.

Supplier Interview: Fraser Rush of Third Wheel Ringing Supplies

Tell us a little about your organisation and how you got started.

Third Wheel Ringing Supplies has been trading for about two years and comprises myself and my wife, Mary. We make a small range of equipment for ringers, specialising in traps and particularly trying to fill gaps in the market. Traditionally much of this sort of equipment has either been knocked together by ringers themselves or imported (expensively) from Europe or North America.

Our range is still very small, but it is gradually expanding as we develop more products. Product development is very slow however as, with bird safety being so important, any new product has to be extensively tested before it can be offered for sale. Nevertheless a slightly expanded product range should be launched in the coming months. Our manufacturing ethos is based on quality; never knowingly making sub-standard equipment in the quest for cheaper production costs. Hence our products are not the cheapest available, but they might be the best.

The business started when I took voluntary redundancy from my job. Having worked for (among others) The Wildlife Trusts, RSPB and Local Authorities as a nature reserves manager for 30 years, I was ready for a change. I’ve always liked making things and have a good grounding in engineering which, together with my interest in bird ringing, led onto me making various bits of ringing equipment for my own use and thence onto a small business, making equipment for other ringers.

Why Third Wheel? Well, we had to call it something and, having a slight obsession with classic motorcycles, particularly those with sidecars, the name seemed to fit us as a family.

What challenges do you face as an organisation working in the ecology sector?

One of our biggest challenges has been to persuade ringers not to rely so heavily on mist nets all the time. Although mist nets are very effective for many species and situations, they still have their limitations and traps can often be just as effective or, for some species, the only method of capture. Increasing numbers of ringers are starting to appreciate the value of different trap designs and, as traps form the mainstay of our business, we see this as a good thing!

Third Wheel’s High Flier Mist Net Support System

What do you consider the most important achievement of your organisation in recent years?

On a purely personal level, Third Wheel’s most important achievement has been that, after only two years of trading, it seems to be working as a business. Although I have a passion for what I do, it still has to pay the bills and, for the time being at least, it is doing just that.

It has also been particularly gratifying to have our equipment used to great effect in a number of research projects worldwide. In addition to various projects in Europe, Third Wheel traps are used for chickadee research in Florida, grey jay research in Alaska and snow bunting research in the Canadian Arctic.

Nearer home, highlights have been a customer who caught a dunnock within 7 minutes of the postman delivering one of our traps and another who, on taking delivery of a new prototype, caught 55 linnets on the first morning.

What is your most memorable wildlife encounter?

Having been pursuing wildlife for nearly my whole life, I’ve been lucky enough to have many memorable wildlife encounters, which makes choosing a favourite rather tricky.

I’ve visited Svalbard (what we used to call Spitsbergen) in the High Arctic many times, as a leader of study tours. Here the memorable wildlife moments come thick and fast with polar bear, Arctic fox, beluga whale and countless breeding auks, wildfowl and waders against a stunning scenic backdrop.

On the bird ringing side of things, my best and most memorable ringing sessions have been catches of wigeon, teal and other wintering wildfowl as part of a cannon netting team. Wigeon are amazing little ducks and to ring one in Devon which probably breeds in central Russia is a real privilege.

Supplier interview: Volker Runkel of ecoObs

ecoObs are a small German company at the forefront of full spectrum bat call recording and identification. They produce the Batcorder 3, a highly optimised bat detector (each new microphone arrives with its own calibration factor to ensure that comparisons between units are valid) designed to consistently record bat calls of sufficiently high quality to make auto-identification possible. Calls can then be processed using ecoObs software bcAdmin 3.0, bcAnalyse 2.0 and batIdent. These enable the rapid and accurate identification of common bat species, speeding up the identification process by up to 70% and allowing users to focus more time on rare or interesting bat species. We asked ecoObs co-founder and managing director Volker Runkel to introduce the company.

Tell us a little about your company and how you got started

For my PhD thesis I developed a quite basic and rather well working solution for passive monitoring of bats. Already then I saw that automation in data collection as well as analysis was one of the keys to focus on, instead of all raw analysis work. We quickly realized there is a huge demand for such a solution. We then were lucky and found an engineer who partnered up with us and redesigned the hardware so it was power efficient, small and easy to use. The batcorder system was born.

What challenges do you face as a company in the ecology/natural history sector?

The sector is rather small and as a hardware producer we for example often have problems acquiring small quantities of parts. In electro-engineering small companies still require some hundred thousand parts while we ask for a mere thousand. Also the demand for devices is highly seasonal – 90% of orders arrive within a few weeks in spring when the bat season starts. On the other end, we have a very vivid and heterogeneous bat worker scene.

What do you consider the most important achievement of your company in recent years?

I think getting the batcorder and the analysis software out in the wild and thus pushing the whole field of passive monitoring and automated bat call identification to where it is now. When we started in 2004 no one believed it would be ever working, and now a rising number of devices and software exists.

What is your most memorable wildlife/natural history encounter?

Spotting and touching an Echidna in the wild!

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