This volume is a mixture of folk-tale, magic, myth, love story and hymn of praise to the natural world of Scotland's high and low lands, their landscapes and creatures, and the poet-guardians who timelessly maintain their care for them.

This volume of nature writing is set largely in Highland Perthshire, the author's home for several years. It is an account of his quest to rediscover something of the ancient bond between man and nature.

The Great Wood of Caledon the historic native forest of Highland Scotland has a reputation as potent and misleading as the wolves that ruled it. The popular image is of an impassable, sun-snuffing shroud, a Highlands-wide jungle infested by wolf, lynx, bear, beaver, wild white cattle, wild boar, and wilder painted men. Jim Crumley shines a light into the darker corners of the Great Wood, to re-evaluate some of the questionable elements of its reputation, and to assess the possibilities of its partial resurrection into something like a national forest. The book threads a path among relict...

This is the work of a man who has known and loved the Scottish Cairngorms for more than 30 years. Jim Crumley marries a poet's instincts to an uncompromising passion for the Cairngorm's arctic character, and for those wildlife tribes which thrive there. He marks nature's rhythms with thoughtful observations of bird and beast, flower and landscape. In the process he strives for a purer empathy with the wilds, seeks out the nourishing bond of man and landscape.

Renowned nature writer Jim Crumley gets up close and personal with some of Britain's most iconic and loved animals - here, the fox.The Encounters in the Wild series not only offers insights into their extraordinary lives, but also considers the conservation efforts to protect them and how the future looks for these much loved animals.

"An utter delight" - Jennifer Tetlow. In the Encounters in the Wild series, renowned nature writer Jim Crumley gets up close and personal with British wildlife - here, the skylark. With his inimitable passion and vision, Jim relives memorable encounters with some of our best-loved native species, offering intimate insights into their extraordinary lives.

`A small mound on white feathers lies on a tussock of grass made grey by a Highland winter. It is all the monument there will ever be to the life of a swan.'With these words, and those that follow, Jim Crumley has ensured that there will be a more enduring witness to the life of this swan, and of all swans, than that pyre of white feathers.

In the Encounters in the Wild series, renowned nature writer Jim Crumley gets up close and personal with British wildlife - here, the kingfisher. With his inimitable passion and vision, Jim relives memorable encounters with some of our best-loved native species, offering intimate insights into their extraordinary lives.

Spring is nature's season of rebirth and rejuvenation. Earth's northern hemisphere tilts towards the sun, winter yields to intensifying light and warmth, and a wild, elemental beauty transforms the Highland landscape and a repertoire of islands from Colonsay to Lindisfarne. Jim Crumley chronicles the wonder, tumult and spectacle of that transformation, but he shows too that it is no Wordsworthian idyll that unfolds. Climate chaos brings unwanted drama to the lives of badger and fox, seal and seabird and raptor, pine marten and sand martin. Jim lays bare the impact of global warming and urges...