Tag: Books

Beetles of Western North America is a landmark book – the only comprehensive colour photographic guide to the remarkably diverse beetles of the United States and Canada west of the Continental Divide.

A follow-up to the highly regarded companion title Beetles of Eastern North America, this engaging and accessible book provides extensive information on 1,428 species from all 131 families that occur in the west, lavishly illustrated with more than 1,500 stunning images. This is an unmatched guide to the rich variety of western North American beetle fauna, a must-have book for anyone from amateur naturalists and nature photographers to insect enthusiasts, students, professional entomologists and biologists.

Arthur V. Evans has kindly taken the time to answer a few questions for us below.

Could you tell us a bit more about how you became interested in entomology? What prompted you to start producing field guides?

My interest in insects began when I was five years old. I grew up on the south-western fringes of the Mojave Desert in southern California, where there were plenty of insects to discover and observe. My parents were incredibly supportive of my interest in insects and nature and took my sister and me on numerous weekend excursions to explore natural areas and historical sites throughout the region. While in elementary school, I met an entomologist who arranged my first visit behind-the-scenes at the Entomology Section of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHMLAC), one of the largest natural history museums in the United States. There, I had the opportunity to meet with each of the entomology curators, all of whom encouraged my interest in entomology. During my high school years, I took part in several extended summer field trips to collect insects, especially beetles, throughout southern California and the Southwest. Several of these trips focused on the Sky Islands of south-eastern Arizona, a biodiversity hot spot in North America. Upon graduating high school, I was hired as a student worker at NHMLAC, an experience that ultimately helped to launch my pursuit of academic degrees in entomology at California State University at Long Beach (B.A., M.S.) and the University of Pretoria (D.Sc.) in South Africa.

I have always had a long-standing interest in informal science education. Not long after I finished my doctorate in entomology at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, I accepted a position as the Director of the Ralph M. Parsons Insect Zoo at NHMLAC. While working there, I was invited to write my first book, An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles (with Charles Bellamy, Henry Holt, 1996). On the strength of this book, I was approached by several publishers over the years to write field guides on insects, including Field Guide to California Beetles with James Hogue (University of California, 2004), Field Guide to Insects and Spiders of North America (Barnes and Noble, 2007), and Beetles of Eastern North America (Princeton University Press, 2014). I have always found field guides useful and writing them gave me an opportunity to share my passion for entomology and my insect images with a larger audience.

Beetles of Western North America, and your other related work Beetles of Eastern North America, are comprehensive guides documenting thousands of species. Can you tell us about your decision to tackle such a huge project?

A truly comprehensive work covering the entire beetle fauna of an area as large as western or eastern North America is a very tall order! Still, I accepted the challenge of these writing these richly illustrated books in order to give these fascinating animals their due. Both Beetles of Western North America and its companion volume, Beetles of Eastern North America, are the first books to present in full color representative species from all families known in their respective regions. I think the diversity of beetles presented in these books will not only appeal to coleopterists and other entomologists but also field biologists and naturalists, as well as anyone interested in macro photography. My hope is that these works will not only stimulate interest in beetles but will also encourage the production of similar regional works that feature orders of insects other than Lepidoptera (moths, butterflies and skippers) and Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies).

Surveying and photographing species in an area as large as western North America must have been challenging. How did you select the species that appeared in the book?

My initial goal was to include images of as many genera as possible representing all 131 families currently known to occur west of the Continental Divide, an area that stretches from Alaska south to western Mexico. However, the book focuses primarily on those species that inhabit the region from southern British Columbia to southern California and south-eastern Arizona. Species selections were based on surveys of several museum and university beetle collections in Arizona and California, reviews of species that appear on bugguide.net and iNaturalist.com, and my own field experiences throughout the west. I concentrated on species that people were likely to see at home and in the field. From 2010 to 2018, I undertook six field trips to observe, collect and photograph beetles for this book, driving more than 8,000 miles. Of the 1500+ images in the book, about half of them were photographed by me, while the rest were supplied by 116 other photographers who generously contributed their photographs to the work.

This book is more than just an ID guide; it also provides tips on photographing, collecting and rearing species. Why did you decide to include these sections?

As a child, I grew up using several field guides that included sections collecting and rearing insects. I found this information incredibly useful then and considered the inclusion of this material essential in Beetles of Western North America. The book begins with an extensive introduction to their morphology, behavior and natural history, use as biocontrol agents and indicators of past environments, threatened and endangered species, observation and photography, conservation, collection and preservation, rearing, and internet resources. I have long believed that both collecting beetles and carefully preparing them as museum-quality specimens are essential for their study and conservation. Eventually, all collections should be deposited in museum or university collections where they will be available to researchers in perpetuity.

Do you have any more field guides of this scale planned for the future?

Yes! I am currently working on a field guide to the beetles of Arizona with Margarethe Brummermann that will cover nearly 2,500 species in more than 80 families. Although the focus is on beetles that occur in Arizona, this book will be very useful for identifying species in adjacent states in both the United States (south-eastern California, southern Nevada, southern Utah, south-western Colorado, western New Mexico) and Mexico (Baja California, Sonora).

A Year Unfolding: A Beautifully Illustrated Guide to Nature Through the Seasons is a stunning book by much-loved printmaker Angela Harding, the first solely dedicated to her art. It is a celebration of Angela’s beautiful prints and a glimpse into her detailed and meticulous process.

A Year Unfolding is a journey through Angela’s year in nature, watching the seasons unfold in front of her studio in Rutland. This book shows how nature transforms and evolves over the course of the year, while also telling the stories behind some of Angela’s most popular images, giving context to her celebrated works, as well as new art created specifically for the book. The beautiful illustrations and evocative imagery of the prose make this the perfect book for readers and art lovers everywhere.

Angela Harding has kindly taken the time to answer a few questions for us below.

Could you tell us how you became interested in nature and printmaking?

Born in Stoke-on-Trent, the Potteries, one of the most industrial parts of the UK, it is perhaps surprising that I am more at home in the countryside than in towns. At school, I was the misfit teenager in socks rather than tights, whose bedroom was plastered with bird posters rather than popstars. So it has continued into my adult life, I have never lost my love of the natural world and in particular, birds still inspire my work. As a student of Fine Art at Leicester Polytechnic in the 1980s, I was first introduced to printmaking. My student home was a tiny cottage in the graveyard of St Marys church in Melton Mowbray. I would cycle the 18 miles to Leicester, collecting roadkill that I strapped to my handbags to draw at college. These drawings would then be turned into prints; at that time, I mainly worked in drypoint and etching. So my love of drawing moved easily into a love of printmaking. Today I work in a combination of block printing and silkscreen, but you can still see my love of line in the way I carve the blocks I make.

A Year Unfolding is a journey through the seasons. Why did you decide to give early spring and early summer their own chapters?

I love all the British seasons, but of all of them, it is the energy of spring and early summer that inspires many of my images. I always try to bring movement into my work, so there is a natural fit with the bursts of new growth and new life you get at these times of year. Also, the intensity of colour, the fresh greens of the garden and hedgerow. Birds become so much part of our day in spring and early summer, in the beauty of their songs and in their mad dashing flight to build nests and find mates.

The natural world takes centre stage in your prints; how important do you think art is in bringing awareness to the environment and how do you think it could be better used?

All of us have moved so far from a proper connection with the natural world—our comforts come high on what we need or what we think we need. So if my prints are a small reminder of the fact that we are very much part of the natural world, I am honoured. We all cherish those moments when we spot a kingfisher or come across a hedgehog in the garden. I hope, in my work, I communicate some of that joy. So if these wonders of experience with nature are to continue and grow, we need to be reminded how special they are and how much we value them.
You’ve created many beautiful and striking book covers, including English Pastoral, The Wild Isles and The Salt Path. What is the process of creating these? Do you approach each project differently?

Working with publishers over the years has given me wonderful opportunities to create new work and see my work published on a variety of themes. The advantage of being an older illustrator is that I come with a lifetime of experience. So when I was asked to do the cover for Raynor Winn’s The Salt Path, I could draw on the experience of having walked that coast path and spent a lot of my youth camping in Cornwall. I hope it is evident in the illustration I made for The Salt Path how much I love Cornwall and what great times I have had exploring its coastline.

The covers English Pastoral and The Wild Isles both used print that I had already made and luckily fitted with the themes of the books. English Pastoral featured a print call the Shippen Curlew—made after visiting my friends Mary and Hugh Elliot, who run the Twenty Twenty Gallery in Ludlow. Shippen is the Shropshire word for sheep shed and they live in a converted Shippen surrounded by farmland. Very sadly, Shropshire curlews are not as common as they were when I lived in Shropshire in my 20s, but they are still a bird I very much associate with the area. The Wild Isles shows a nightjar and moth against a seascape—this image is one of three prints made on the same theme. It was inspired by the trips my husband and I make on our small wooden boat—a lot of our summer months are spent sailing on the east coast of Britain.

What prompted you to make the jump from illustrator to author and create your own book?

I have always wanted to collect my work into a book. I work in themes and series so even though many of the images were made years apart, they fit together well. I hope the writing in the book is ok; I am, of course, more comfortable with a pen or chisel! I do come from a literary background; my father was an unpublished poet and a great influence. He studied English at Cambridge in the late 1940s under Professor F. R. Leavis. It is a shame my father is no longer here to see my book; I hope he would have approved. The poems that mark my chapter headings are ones we often shared together.

Finally, do you have any further projects planned that you’d like to tell us about?

I do have new projects in mind, but nothing definite that I can share with you at the moment. I am hoping to do a series of prints about the British coast that my husband and I visit on Wingsong, our boat. Travelling by boat and bike gives a different perspective on our landscape—we mainly spend time on the east coast moving from Suffolk up to Shetland, but we have both been around the whole coast by boat and by bike.