The Great Big Book Of Irish Wildlife

A beautiful picture book tracking nature through the seasons in Ireland. It explores nature in your back garden as well as weird and wonderful natural phenomena, such as the metamorphosis from Tadpole to Frog; the Red Deer rut in autumn; or a starling flock in winter.

'Ireland's heritage is being steadily whittled away by human exploitation, pollution and other aspects of modern development. This could represent a serious loss to the nation.' Irish Government Report, June 1969 Nature in Ireland is disappearing at an alarming rate. Overfishing, industrial-scale farming and pollution have decimated wildlife habitats and populations. In a single lifetime, vast shoals of herring, rivers bursting with salmon, and bogs alive with flocks of curlew and geese have all become folk memories. Coastal and rural communities are struggling to survive; the foundations of our tourism and agricultural sectors are being undermined. The lack of political engagement frequently sees the state in the European Court of Justice for environmental issues. Pádraic Fogarty authoritatively charts how this grim failure to manage our natural resources has impoverished our country. But all is not lost: he also reveals possibilities for the future, describing how we can fill our seas with fish, farm in tune with nature, and create forests that benefit both people and wildlife. He makes a persuasive case for the return of long-lost species like wild boar, cranes and wolves, showing how the interests of the country and its nature can be reconciled. A provocative call to arms, Whittled Away presents an alternative path that could lead us all to a brighter future.

A revised and thoroughly updated edition of the definitive guide to identifying dragonflies in Europe. The first edition of the Field Guide to the Dragonflies of Britain and Europe was a ground-breaking identification guide that led to an increase in Odonata recording across Europe. The second edition includes fully revised regional guides and identification texts, updated distribution maps and conservation statuses, illustrated accounts for five species that have been discovered in the region since the first edition, updated checklists and taxonomy, and new photographs throughout, as well as an introduction to larvae identification. Each species is lavishly illustrated with artworks of males, females and variations, as well as close-ups of important characters.

This is the story of life in Ireland – a story half a billion years in the making. With its castles, crannogs and passage tombs, Ireland is a land where history looms large, but the saga of life on this island dates back millions of years before the first people set foot here. In Life in Ireland, Conor O’Brien guides the reader on a journey around the island to explore the history of natural life here, from the Jurassic Coast of Antrim to the great Ice Age bone-beds of Cork. Along the way, we’ll meet some of the astonishing creatures to have called Ireland home through the ages: shelled monsters; huge marine lizards; armoured dinosaurs; giant deer; mighty mammoths. Vital strands in the story of life on Earth have left their mark here, including some of the first creatures to crawl onto land or take to the wing. This epic journey will take us from the first fossils to the present day, to see how our wildlife has adapted to the human age and explore what the future might hold for life in Ireland.

Niall Mac Coitir provides a comprehensive look at the folklore, legends and history of animals in Ireland, and describes their relations with people, being hunted for food, fur, sport, or as vermin, and their position today. A final section, inspired by stories of animal transformation, looks at twelve animals and how we can enrich our lives by visualising ourselves with their special qualities. This fascinating and beautifully illustrated compilation of folklore, legends and natural history will delight all with an interest in Ireland's animals.

An important tool of a birdwatcher is a good identification guide. Most cover the birds of Europe and few deal exclusively with Ireland. This first photographic identification guide to the birds of Ireland has over 1,600 photos of more than 260 species, in an easy, quick-reference format. With eight to fifteen images per species, the key identification features of each bird are shown, with concise descriptions and pointers to indicate important features. This guide is produced in association with BirdWatch Ireland, Ireland's leading bird-conservation organisation. The purchase of this guide contributes funds to BirdWatch Ireland's conservation and education initiatives to help protect and promote Ireland's wild birds and habitats. similar to: Ireland's Garden Birds by Jim Wilson and Oran O'Sullivan.

On an Irish Island tells the remarkable story of a remote outpost nearly untouched by time in the first half of the twentieth century, and of the adventurous men and women who visited and were inspired by it. In a love letter to a vanished way of life, Robert Kanigel brings to life this wildly beautiful island, notable for the vivid communal life of its residents and the unadulterated Irish they spoke well into the twentieth century. With the Irish language rapidly disappearing, Great Blasket became a magnet for scholars, linguists, and writers during the Gaelic renaissance. As we follow these visitors—among them John Millington Synge, author of The Playboy of the Western World—we are captivated both by the tiny group of islanders who kept an entire country’s past alive and by their complex relationships with those who brought the island’s story to the larger world.

Glow-in-the-dark owls, eggs boiling in Icelandic hot pools, the gangster tactics of the devil's coach-horse beetle ... Éanna Ní Lamhna has seen them all! Éanna explores the wonders of our wild world, from a safari in Tanzania to the cloud forests of Costa Rica, from rat-hunting in Canada to whale watching in New Zealand. She draws on her experience as a diver to tell of face-to-face encounters with fascinating fan worms, elusive sea hares and a murderous crab, and rings the alarm bells on the environmental challenges facing us. Éanna also recounts with cheerful relish the pitfalls and delights of being a broadcaster and a scientist. Sure why would anyone want to be anything else?