The Butterfly Isles

This book will enable the identification of each of the 57 species of butterfly that has been recorded from the Cayman Islands. There is a description of every butterfly, stressing its most important characteristics, with photographs of living and mounted specimens. The distribution, history and biology of each species are reviewed and the plants which provide adult butterflies with nectar or feed their caterpillars are tabulated. A general introduction includes a discussion of the affinities and size of the Caymanian butterfly fauna. The three islands share most of their butterfly species but each island has uniquely characteristic elements and five subspecies live only in the Cayman Islands. Knowledge is fundamental to conservation; it is hoped that both the casual butterfly watcher and those more committed to the study of butterflies will discover much of interest in this book and thereby make a contribution to the continuing survival of these beautiful insects.

Winner of the National Geographic Reader's Award 2018 Shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year 2018 Shortlisted for the BBC Countryfile Magazine Country Book of the Year 2018 'For all the islomaniacs out there, Patrick Barkham's Islander looks unmissable' Robert Macfarlane 'Brimming with nature, this is a fitting tribute to the strangeness and beauty of our British isles' Financial Times 'Islander is a charming and attractive book... his shrewd study of the islander mentality [...] could stand for the entire country' Spectator The British Isles are an archipelago made up of two large islands and 6,289 smaller ones. Some, like the Isle of Man, resemble miniature nations, with their own language and tax laws; others, like Ray Island in Essex, are abandoned and mysterious places haunted by myths, ghosts and foxes. There are resurgent islands such as Eigg, which have been liberated from capricious owners to be run by their residents; holy islands like Bardsey, the resting place of 20,000 saints, and still a site of spiritual questing; and deserted islands such as St Kilda, famed for the evacuation of its human population, and now dominated by wild sheep and seabirds. In this evocative and vividly observed book, Patrick Barkham explores some of the most beautiful landscapes in the British Isles as he travels to ever-smaller islands in search of their special magic. Our small islands are both places of freedom and imprisonment, party destinations and oases of peace, strangely suburban and deeply wild. They are places where the past is unusually present, but they can also offer a vision of an alternative future. Meeting all kinds of islanders, from nuns to puffins, from local legends to rare subspecies of vole, he seeks to discover what it is like to live on a small island, and what it means to be an islander.

This beautifully illustrated overview of the wildlife of the British Isles showcases the diversity of our plant and animal life.

Britain is the home of the badger - there are more badgers per square kilometre in this country than in any other. And yet many of us have never seen one alive and in the wild. They are nocturnal creatures who vanish into their labyrinthine underground setts at the first hint of a human. Here, Patrick Barkham follows in the footsteps of his badger-loving grandmother, to meet the feeders, farmers and scientists who know their way around Badgerlands: the mysterious world in which these distinctively striped creatures snuffle, dig and live out their complex social lives. As the debate over the badger cull continues, Barkham weighs the evidence on both sides of the argument, and delves into the rich history of the badger - from their prehistoric arrival in Britain and their savage persecution over the centuries, to Kenneth Grahame's fictional creation in Wind in the Willows and the badger who became a White House pet. From the celebrated author of The Butterfly Isles, this is rich, vivid nature writing at its best.