The NHBS Conservation Hub – news, reviews and resources
Floating debris is a real threat to the oceans’ wildlife, as revealed by this study of the stomach contents of a juvenile turtle, living off the coast of Argentina.
Read the full story on the Independent’s website
Related title: Flotsametrics and the Floating World
Continuing our weekly selection of the very best titles available through NHBS:
by Paul Naylor
A photographic guide to the fishes, crustaceans, molluscs and other resident animals of the waters around the British Isles.
This is the third edition of this best-selling guide to the creatures that roam the British coastal seas. Accessible and clear, with detailed photography by the author, this is the perfect companion for those who enjoy exploring these waters and their residents. Previous editions have been very popular with the diving community, and this new edition takes a closer look at rock pool life which should broaden its appeal to those who like to appreciate sea-life while remaining on solid ground.
Who?
Paul Naylor has been snorkelling and diving around the coast of Britian for 35 years, and photographing the resident animals for 25 years. Paul is actively involved in education, from schools to governmental organisations, on the subject of our marine fauna. He has a doctorate in marine biology and is an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society.
Visit Paul’s website for more information and to view image galleries
With just over 2 weeks to go in this year’s Backlist Bargains sale, here is our Top Ten selection from this years bestsellers:
There are still thousands of excellent books available at huge discounts so make the most of this wonderful offer while it lasts.
Continuing our weekly selection of the very best titles available through NHBS:
by Dominic Couzens
An insider’s guide to what’s really going on with the birds in your garden.
Garden Bird Confidential profiles 60 of Europe’s regular garden birds. It includes the usual identification information – voice, habitat, breeding etc., but takes it a stage further. The ‘confidential’ section for each species presents fascinating nuggets of scientific research from the last 40 years. For example, it was recently discovered that great tits had developed a taste for roosting bats in a cave in Hungary; that the blackcap’s song rate can be related to the safekeeping of its nest; and that some bird species, such as the dunnock, have found breeding success in an arrangement of tense polygamy. Colour photography abounds, including some lovely full-page portraiture.
Who?
Dominic Couzens is a leading nature writer and lecturer who has been writing about wildlife for over 20 years. He is the author of several successful books including Top 100 Birding Sites of the World, Atlas of Rare Birds and The Secret Lives of Garden Birds. Dominic has appeared on BBC television and regularly contributes to leading magazines including BBC Wildlife Magazine, Birdwatching and Birds, the magazine of the RSPB.
Nest boxes are an increasingly important tool in helping to reverse the decline of many bird species. With such a broad range of nest boxes available, we’ve put together a table to help you to find the right nest box regardless of where you live and what species you’d like to help.
Check out the species-by-species table of nest boxes
Continuing our weekly selection of the very best titles available through NHBS:
by Richard J Ladle and Robert J Whittaker
An authoritative key volume for students and researchers in this developing field.
The authors of Conservation Biogeography are both associated with the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford where the nascent field was formally defined in 2005. They state their aim in the preface as “[…]to expand the scope and agenda of conservation biogeography, to identify critical gaps and weaknesses, and to provide an introduction to the toolbox of concepts and methods – and thereby to produce a broad-based text for university courses and programmes.”
After defining the field, the chapters work their way through the impact of social values on conservation, biodiversity mapping and its processes, planning considerations, island biogeography, invasions and homogeneity, and the volume ends with discussions on the future prospects and challenges associated with the biogeographical approach to global conservation management.
Who?
Richard J. Ladle was the founding Director of Oxford University’s MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation and Management. Since 2009 he has been working in Brazil as an international conservation consultant and science writer. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the Federal University of Alagoas, teaching and doing research on diverse and interdisciplinary aspects of conservation, biogeography and ecology.
Robert J. Whittaker is the current Academic Director of the MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation and Management, and holds the title of Professor of Biogeography in the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford. He is a founding member and past President (2009–2010) of the International Biogeography Society. He is currently editor-in-chief of the Journal of Biogeography. He has a long-standing interest in island biogeography, patterns and processes controlling diversity, and the application of biogeography to conservation.
Continuing our weekly selection of the very best titles available through NHBS:
A detailed account of the life cycle of conifers, and an analysis of their ecological and environmental importance.
Why?
This is a comprehensive reference work, by an expert in tree growth and morphology. The author has published over 40 refereed papers and more than 20 technical reports and handbooks during his 34-year career in the faculty of forestry and environmental management.
As well as being authoritative on the growth of conifers, this volume introduces the reader to environmental considerations and the reliance of humankind on the conifers.
Lives of Conifers is extensively illustrated throughout (see images below), with detailed comparative sequences of morphological portraiture, stylish diagrammatic representations of anatomical features and many informative charts and figures. The chapters follow the stages of the life-cycle and there is an extensive glossary.
Who?
Graham R. Powell is Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Forestry and Environmental Management at the University of New Brunswick, Canada
“This book cleverly manages to blend personal stories with the natural history of crows and the wilderness of the city in a very entertaining read. No matter whether you’re a naturalist, urbanite, suburbanite or already an urban naturalist, this book will undoubtedly introduce you to some idea you never considered before.” More…
Read the full review of Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness at The Metropolitan Field Guide. It’s one of our favourite wildlife blogs – an excellent resource on urban wildlife and ecology.
Every month, we add more than 300 new book titles to our catalogue (you can find the list every month in our Monthly Catalogue). Publishers often announce their new titles to us months in advance of publication (which can turn into years…), and we find that by the time the books arrive into stock for the first time, some of the information we had initially catalogued about a title has changed.
The differences between the original announcement and the actual published book can range from a higher page number, or more illustrations, to a change in the order in which the authors are presented, or an amendment to the title or subtitle. Quite often the cover illustration undergoes several transformations. In very rare cases, the book will even have changed publishers. Even so, the earlier we hear about a book the better we like it, even if the finished product will look somewhat different.
In order to keep the information in our catalogue as accurate as it can be, we give each and every book that we have never seen before a thorough bibliographic check – in fact the cataloguing data for nearly every single book needs to be added to or amended. In the office, the new books are always referred to as the “book checks”, and this stack of each day’s book checks is the most popular place in the NHBS warehouse.
At the same time as verifying the bibliographic data, we evaluate the book and decide whether it’s a good fit for featuring on the NHBS homepage, or as a book of the week, and we make sure that the descriptive text reflects the contents of the book accurately.
This method of rigorous checking and evaluating ensures that no book is ever included in our emails, or in a flyer or advert, unless we are comfortable recommending it.
For me, book checking is also one of the most fun jobs ever – books arrive from all over the world, and they have that exciting “new” smell and feel to them. Every now and then there is a true gem amongst them, a book on an unusual subject, or one with truly outstanding illustrations, that turns out to be much more important than the initial cataloguing suggested.
Just last week, the book checks contained some very good titles. Highlights include:
The Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds – eagerly anticipated by us. We have a pre-publication offer on it until the end of April. My first reaction to seeing this book was that it’s a lot bigger than I thought it would be! I checked out the Steller’s Jay page, as I remember these birds so well from seeing them on the West Coast of Canada, and the illustrations, as promised, are startlingly different from the usual photographic field guide, and seem to make identification very easy. This one is definitely going on the NHBS home page!
The new edition of A Diperist’s Handbook should prove to be popular, as well, it is part of a series of similar handbooks published by the Amateur Entomologists’ Society, and the book production value is outstanding. A very useful addition to any entomologist’s library, and I can’t recall seeing any similar books on the same subject recently.
A new Crossbill Guide: Loire Valley – Loire, Brenne and Sologne. This series of nature travel guides is one of my favourites and we always look forward to seeing a new one published. Browse all the Crossbill wildlife travel guides.
The Human Planet Blu-Ray arrived today, and before we could even book it into stock, several people in the office declared their intention of buying a copy for their own use. (This is a recent BBC series, which examines how humans in extreme enviroments adapt to living with nature). The book accompanying the series came into stock last week.
A Field Guide to the Butterflies of Singapore: A well-illustrated photographic guide, published by a specialist natural history publisher in Singapore.
“I had doubts concerning price/quality but I bought this book when we visited Biebrza in May 2010 and I must say it is pretty fantastic. It was so useful and easy to use in the field. Very clear and detailed on bird locations and well laid out. Maps and indexes make it very easy to find what you are searching for. We had some stunning views of everything we wanted including Greater Spotted Eagle, Aquatic Warbler and unbelievable views of male Red-breasted Flycatchers and I am pretty sure we saved a lot of time and hassle. We just wouldn’t be able to see all that without this book.”
Customer reviews can be read in the ‘Reviews’ tab on each product page and here on the Hoopoe