The Pinkfoot Goose Collection 2019

‘Beautiful, fun, a great book... the best book ever written!’ - Chris Evans ‘It is a brilliant book, a toolkit, packed full of information – even I learnt a few new things!’ - Chris Packham Explore the world outside your window. For 13 years the BBC's Springwatch and its sister programmes, Autumnwatch and Winterwatch, have been bringing the best of Britain’s wildlife into our homes. Now Springwatch: The 2019 Almanac offers the perfect guide for anyone looking to get out and explore the wonders of nature just outside their back door. Taking you month by month through the coming year, the almanac combines compelling stories with practical guidance that will inspire anyone to start exploring. It has all the information you need to discover the natural wonders around you, from how to identify animal tracks and bird nests to the best time to witness starling murmurations and mayflies hatching. Complete with monthly daylight and rainfall charts and beautifully illustrated with black and white line drawings, The Springwatch Almanac is the ideal companion for every nature lover.

For many humans, birds are the most fascinating group of animals and they are definitely among the best-known and studied organisms. Thanks to global citizen science data, we know that there are some 50 billion individual birds in the world at present, which is about six birds for every human on the planet. Birds have an important role as indicators of the state of the environment, giving them high public value. Human-related global impacts such as climate changes and accelerating urbanization force extant species to continuous adaptations, population modifications, or even outright extinction. This book includes nine chapters covering such topics as bird genetics, the colour of avian plumage, conservation problems, sustainable hunting, habitat disturbance, range expansion and introductions, and long-term bird population changes and challenges. A key chapter explains the genetic rules and reasons why we have continuously more bird species in the world and why we may end up having 7,000 species more than the present 11,000 species.

This is the only book to cover toxoplasmosis of animals and humans thoroughly in one single source. Found worldwide from Alaska to Australasia, Toxoplasma gondii is the cause of one of the most common parasitic infections in humans, livestock, companion animals, and wildlife, and is included on the list of potential bioterrorism microbes. Furthermore, T. gondii has been and continues to be used extensively as a model for the cell biology of apicomplexan parasites. In the decade since the second edition of this book was published, there has been an explosion of knowledge concerning the parasite Toxoplasma gondii and toxoplasmosis. This update provides unique information on all known host types for this parasite, with an additional chapter on history, substantial updates throughout, and a detailed focus on the biology of the parasite in Chapter 2. The third edition is compiled by author JP Dubey, an authority on T. gondii who has worked with virtually all hosts of the protozoan during the last 55 years, including humans, all livestock species, wildlife, and zoo animals. The book distills the voluminous and potentially confusing scientific literature, that has grown geometrically in the 30+ years since the publication of the first edition, into a comprehensive resource for all professionals, graduate students and researchers working in this field.

The structure of sequential behavior and its patterns have attracted the attention of researchers from various disciplines, such as game theory, human and animal behavior, evolutionary ecology, psychology, behavioral economy, and cognitive sciences. Sequential behavior seems to be involved in the processes of sequential learning, decision-making processes, and exploratory behavior. There are, however, competing hypotheses regarding the mechanisms involved in the complexity of the behavioral responses of organisms when exposed to changing environments. The behavioral response to different environmental conditions is often utilized in behavioral ecology studies, where the changes in behavior are quantified in terms of probability of dispersal, distance, and speed of movements or time budget, where the time spent on different activities (foraging, resting, explore, etc.) is registered and analyzed in terms of cost–benefit. This book represents a series of articles covering a broad spectrum of organisms and proposes the analysis of sequential behavior utilizing indices commonly applied in the estimation of developmental instability (fluctuating asymmetry, directional asymmetry, and antisymmetry) toward estimating the degree of “Behavioral Instability”. Deviations from symmetry will be interpreted in ecological and evolutionary terms, where the cost and benefits of changes of the degree of behavioral instability will be analyzed in terms of overall costs and benefits and its evolutionary significance. Presented in this collection are multidisciplinary studies (theoretical and computational as well as experimental and empirical approaches) that validate the proposed approach and pave the way for future investigation in the novel field of what is best described as behavioral instability.

This multidisciplinary book discusses the manifold challenges arctic marine and terrestrial wildlife, ecosystems and people face these times. Major health threats caused by the consequences of climate change, environmental pollution and increasing tourism in northern regions around the globe are explored. The most common infectious diseases in wild and domesticated arctic animals are reviewed and the impact they could have on circumpolar ecosystems as well as on the lives of arctic people are profoundly discussed. Moreover, the book reviews arctic hunting, herding and food conservation strategies and introduces veterinary medicine in remote indigenous communities. "Arctic One Health" is authored by experts based in arctic regions spanning from North America over Europe to Asia to cover a broad range of topics and perspectives. The book addresses researchers in Veterinary Medicine, Ecology, Microbiology and Anthropology. The book contributes towards achieving the UN Sustainable Developmental Goals, in particular SDG 15, Life on Land.

In the autumn of 2018 Stephen Rutt and his partner moved to a house near the Solway Firth in Dumfries. As they settled into their new home thousands of pink-footed geese were arriving on the Firth from the Arctic Circle to make it their winter home. The arrival of huge flocks of geese in the UK is one of the most evocative and powerful harbingers of winter; a vast natural phenomenon to capture the imagination. And so begins an extraordinary odyssey. From his new home in the north to further afield in wide open spaces of the south, Stephen traces the lives and habits of five of the most common species of goose in the UK. With an expert eye and clear, elegant prose he paints perfect portraits of these large, startling, garrulous and cooperative birds. But this is also a compact and beautifully written study of the place the goose has in our culture, our history and, occasionally, on our festive table. A vivid tour of the inbetween landscapes they inhabit and a celebration of the short days, varied weathers and long nights of the season during which we share our home with these birds.

‘A magisterial diary for bird lovers.’ Observer ⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Telegraph As seen on BBC Winterwatch 2023 ‘Honest, human and heart-grabbing. I loved this book so much.’ Sophie Pavelle, author of Forget Me Not ‘Delightful’ Stephen Moss, author of Ten Birds that Changed the World ‘Fascinating and thought-provoking’ Jake Fiennes, author of Land Healer ‘Awe-filled and absorbing’ Nicola Chester, author of On Gallows Down The Meaning of Geese is a book of thrilling encounters with wildlife, of tired legs, punctured tyres and inhospitable weather. Above all, it is the story of Nick Acheson’s love for the land in which he was born and raised, and for the wild geese that fill it with sound and spectacle every winter. Renowned naturalist and conservationist Nick Acheson spent countless hours observing and researching wild geese, transported through all weathers by his mother’s 40-year-old trusty red bicycle. He meticulously details the geese’s arrival, observing what they mean to his beloved Norfolk and the role they play in local people’s lives – and what role the birds could play in our changing world. During a time when many people faced the prospect of little work or human contact, Nick followed the pinkfeet and brent geese that filled the Norfolk skies and landscape as they flew in from Iceland and Siberia. In their flocks, Nick encountered rarer geese, including Russian white-fronts, barnacle geese and an extremely unusual grey-bellied brant, a bird he had dreamt of seeing since thumbing his mother’s copy of Peter Scott’s field guide as a child. To honour the geese’s great athletic migrations, Nick kept a diary of his sightings as well as the stories he discovered through the community of people, past and present, who loved them, too. Over seven months Nick cycles over 1,200 miles – the exact length of the pinkfeet’s migration to Iceland.