Armed with hand lenses and opera glasses, traveling on foot, by buggy, or model T, they explored thousands of miles of deserts, forests, beaches, and jungles. They were pioneering women naturalists who observed, studied, and experimented, then returned to write up their findings. What resulted were exquisitely written and scientifically accurate accounts of their explorations into natural science--a field long dominated by men.
Marcia Myers Bonta has collected the most charming and sensitive writings of twenty-five women naturalists of the late nineteenth through early twentieth...

Over the past several years, the safety of public drinking water has often been called into question. Is fluoridated water safe to drink? Is there lead or radon in tap water? Should you buy a water softener or other home treatment device? Jim Symons, known as "Dr. Water," offers critical information on such subjects as health, home treatment, quality testing, federal regulation, and consumer information. Written in question-and-answer format, Drinking Water offers straightforward, easy-to-understand answers to many common questions about public water supplies, thus providing a "user-friendly"...

Africa's great game parks house thousands of the world's most incredible wildlife, including the elephant, rhino, zebra, and gorilla, but along with this beauty comes a desperate struggle for existence. This living legacy faces the possibility of becoming extinct because of ignorance and apathy.
In "Wild ""Edens"" Africa's ""Premier""""Game""""Parks"" and Their""""Wildlife," longtime conservationist and seasoned African travelerJoseph James Shomon journeys through the wild African scene, revealing its magnificence and mystique, and wonderfully describes the game parks' location, ecology,...

Renowned naturalist Alexander F. Skutch 's critically acclaimed book The Minds of Birds first introduced a controversial review of bird behavior. Now, in possibly his last book on birds, he reflects on a memorable career brimmed with discovery and controversy.Trogons, Laughing Falcons, and Other Neotropical Birds looks at the lifetime dedication of an expert naturalist who for seventy years has studied birds in tropical America, from Mexico to Peru and Venezuela. A pair of Violaceous Trogons, the only New World birds known to nest in an arboreal ants' nest; a pair of Laughing Falcons, the...

"It is a basic part of human nature to anticipate a new cycle of growth in our natural world and to recall fond memories of earlier springs. But the signals of spring are varied and personal. They differ from one person to the next and often are very special to the beholder."--from the Introduction
We know by the calendar when spring officially begins, but how does nature tell us spring has come? In "Heralds of Spring in Texas" Roland H. Wauer walks us through Texas, from the Rio Grande to the Panhandle, as spring arrives.
In addition to offering us his own special memories of...

In southwest Texas where the Rio Grande arcs southward into Mexico lies Big Bend National Park, 708,221 acres of river floodplain, desert, grasslands, and majestic mountains, a richly varied enviroment that exist more or less as it did before man's arival. The wealth of the Big Bend is in its dramatic landscape, which provides natural habitiats ranging form desert to alpine, and its consequently impressive variety of flora and fauna.
Intended as a biological introduction to one of the nation's ourstanding natural systems, "Naturalist's Big Bend" highlights the distinctive plants and...

In "Of Golden Toads and ""Serpents' Roads"," " readers are invited tojoin a seasoned researcher as he "goes herping." After nearly twenty years of traveling around the globe searching for toads, frogs, salamanders, snakes, lizards, and turtles, herpetologist Paul Freed pauses to tell stories of his adventures while finding and collecting reptiles and amphibians, from the tropics of Costa Rica to the deserts of Namibia.
Whether confronting scorpions, beefworms, army ants, or venomous snakes, Freed conveys a contagious enthusiasm for the outdoors and all that lives in it. With humor and...

On the morning of January 1, 2000, Mark T. Adams started counting birds. His goal was to find the largest possible number of species in one year in Texas, an undertaking known in birding parlance as a Big Year. By the evening of December 31, he had tied the record of 489 species seen or heard within the state's borders in a single calendar year. Traveling 30,000 miles across Texas by car and 18,000 miles by plane, Adams alone saw 92 percent of all bird species reported in the state in 2000.
In "Chasing Birds across Texas, " Adams invites birders and others with a broad interest in the...

From the curious sounds of baby swifts chattering in the chimney to the awe-inspiring sight of birds entering their roost at dusk, like smoke swirling back into the flue, Chimney Swifts have captured the imagination of many generations of North Americans.
These sleek birds with crescent-shaped wings and acrobatic flight patterns migrate to North America from the Amazon River Basin each spring to breed and raise their young. But by the late 1980s, changes in chimney construction and homeowner attitudes had contributed to a major decline in the numbers of Chimney Swifts. Authors Paul and...