Nature

Whether you're eyeing a hybrid tea you remember from your mother's garden, or one of the new easy-care landscaping varieties, this book makes it easy to add the unmatched beauty of roses to your garden. Inside you'll find:

- Expert advice on choosing the right rose for your space and nurturing it for years of beauty.

- Detailed descriptions of more than 200 varieties of perennials in the illustrated plant encyclopedia.

Presents in question and answer format information about the behavior of a wide variety of creatures, ranging from the paramecium to the chimpanzee.

A highly visual guide to identifying birds in the field based on the important, unchanging features of size, shape, structure, and behavior

Birding is an extremely rewarding and fun hobby, but some situations can be frustrating or unsuccessful because of a variety of challenging viewing conditions. This guide to identifying birds offers the holistic "birding by impression" method, which not only helps with these difficult conditions, but also develops an efficient mental identification process using left- and right-brain skills. It begins with a conscious assessment of a bird's unchanging physical characteristics, including general size, body shape, structural features (bill, legs, neck, and wings), and behavior. Using this approach, birders can quickly assess all birds and distinguish new and uncommon species from familiar ones. They can then examine more detailed field marks to fine-tune the identification. Rather than a traditional field guide, this book presents an interactive how-to approach to a more complete identification process.

This year the Huntington celebrates the centennial of its spectacular desert garden, one of the largest such collections of cacti and other succulents in the world. Visitors to the twelve-acre garden marvel at its more than 3,000 species, including the vivid blue and green Puya, a rare type of bromeliad; the Lithops, or "living stone," whose camouflaged leaves mimic the shape and color of rocks; and the dazzling red, orange, and yellow torch-like blooms of the winter-flowering aloe.
In this beautifully illustrated volume, Lyons draws on decades of experience with these unusual specimens to explore the Huntington's desert garden. He tells of its early development, describes its principal collections, and gives instructions on the care and landscaping of desert gardens.

Did you know that each flight feather has one million parts? That birds from different areas have different accents? Overflowing with amazing facts, fun projects, and fascinating legends, this book will entertain and enlighten kids from 9 to 99.

Peterson
The best-selling field guides of all time


To see a fog shrew, should you go to Muir Woods National Monument? If you're planning to visit Yellowstone National Park, what animals can you expect to see? When should a photographer visit to get a shot of a gray fox?
A mammal finder's guide (rather than an identification guide), this book tells you how to look, where to go, and what you are likely to find there. Two main sections provide a choice of looking up information by place or by species: The first includes regions of North America, highlighting the best places to look for mammals. The species-finding guide has accounts of more than four hundred species of mammals, including detailed directions to specific parks, refuges, and other locations; the best times of day (or night) to look; and much more information specific to each mammal.

Sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation and the Roger Tory Peterson Institute




VLADIMIR DINETS has a PhD in zoology and specializes in animal behavior, conservation biology, and the natural history of little-known animals living in remote places.

To learn more, visit www.petersonfieldguides.com or scan here.

The most user-friendly butterfly guide ever published, still handy and compact.

- Includes color plates of Mexican-border rarities
- More than 2,300 images of butterflies in natural poses
- Pictorial table of contents
- Convenient one-page index
- Range maps on text pages

Birds are astonishingly intelligent creatures. According to revolutionary new research, some birds rival primates and even humans in their remarkable forms of intelligence.

In The Genius of Birds, acclaimed author Jennifer Ackerman explores the newly discovered brilliance of birds. As she travels around the world to the most cutting-edge frontiers of research--the distant laboratories of Barbados and New Caledonia, the great tit communities of the United Kingdom and the bowerbird habitats of Australia, the ravaged mid-Atlantic coast after Hurricane Sandy and the warming mountains of central Virginia and the western states--Ackerman not only tells the story of the recently uncovered genius of birds but also delves deeply into the latest findings about the bird brain itself that are shifting our view of what it means to be intelligent.

Consider, as Ackerman does, the Clark's nutcracker, a bird that can hide as many as 30,000 seeds over dozens of square miles and remember several months later where it put them, or the mockingbirds and thrashers, species that can store 200 to 2,000 different songs in a brain a thousand times smaller than ours.

But beyond highlighting how birds use their unique genius in technical ways, Ackerman points out the impressive social smarts of birds. They deceive and manipulate. They eavesdrop. They give gifts. They kiss to console one another. They blackmail their parents. They alert one another to danger. They summon witnesses to the death of a peer. They may even grieve.

This elegant scientific investigation and travelogue weaves personal anecdotes with fascinating science. Ackerman delivers an extraordinary story that will both give readers a new appreciation for the exceptional talents of birds and let them discover what birds can reveal about our changing world. Richly informative and beautifully written, The Genius of Birds celebrates the triumphs of these surprising and fiercely intelligent creatures.

Hummingbirds and butterflies are some of the most beautiful visitors to a backyard, but they can also be some of the most elusive. This second collaboration between the Peterson Field Guide series and Bird Watcher's Digest includes tips on how to attract hummingbirds and butterflies to backyards--and how to identify them once they've arrived. Bill Thompson III and Connie Toops have decades of firsthand experience and have written the book in a fun, lighthearted style, providing both amateur and veteran nature watchers with need-to-know information, including where hummingbirds and butterflies live, what they eat, and the best garden plants to attract them. The species profiles of the 15 most common hummingbirds and 40 most common butterflies serve as a field guide, showing ranges, identifying marks, and preferred habitats. Full-color photographs and detailed drawings make attracting, identifying, and feeding these colorful creatures a snap.

This fully illustrated comprehensive 12-book series provides the reader with detailed information on each of the 12 natural cures presented. Sections in each book such as, Conditions and Doses, Re-Thinking Medication, Treatment Know-How, Science Talk and Grow-It-Yourself, offer a complete introduction to the values, practices and benefits of alternative medicine.

A new-generation reference book about the building blocks of our world, for kids used to surfing and swiping.

Small in size but big in personality, stars of movies, TV, and games, penguins are loved by kids everywhere. This book reveals their real lives, far beyond our wildest imagination! Meet every one of the 17 different kinds of penguin; discover how they eat, sleep, talk, walk, and swim, and of course, the wonderful stories of how they look after their eggs and chicks. Big and beautiful Antarctic images, especially shot for this book, are combined with up-to-the-minute information from penguin experts, and dramatic modern graphics to entice confident and reluctant readers alike. And there's lots to do! Be a marine biologist for a day, make and decorate a penguin egg, and track how the diminishing ice is threatening the lives of these fantastic creatures.

Pequeños, pero con una gran personalidad, los pingüinos son adorables. Este libro contiene todo lo que deseas saber sobre ellos. Con hermosas imágenes obtenidas específicamente para el mismo.

Based on an intensive year-long study of the river and its surrounding regions, this is an engrossing portrait of the river and the people who live along its banks. Along with the stories of the people is the natural history of the river, a river and an ecosystem under seige. Author River Walk tour down the Delaware.

Librarians have come to realize that they still need a quality print encyclopedia. The New Standard Encyclopedia has been vigorously updated for the new millennium and remains an outstanding value for your library or classroom. This resource, available at a fraction of the cost of comparable encyclopedias, compresses the ever-expanding body of human knowledge into a usable and helpful package. It is designed to encourage users to explore as well as sharpen their research skills.

The New Standard Encyclopedia is written in a clear, concise style that allows students of any age to access authoritative information quickly. Our impressive list of authenticators includes more than 500 subject area specialists.

The decline of bird species in a wide range of North American habitats -- forests, prairies, shrublands, mountain regions, marshes, and deserts -- has inspired two decades of intense scientific study of bird ecology and conservation. But for professional scientists and amateur birders alike, interpreting the results of these diverse studies is often complex and bewildering. This accessible book pulls together recent research on bird species and habitats to show how basic ecological principles apply in seemingly different situations. Robert A. Askins provides an engaging introduction to bird ecology and concepts of landscape ecology, focusing on such intriguing species as Bachman's Warbler, Red Crossbill, Mountain Plover, and Marbled Murrelet.

Understanding the ancient landscapes of North America and how humans have changed them, Askins says, is essential for devising plans to protect and restore bird populations. In addition to such obvious changes to the landscape as the clearing of forests and plowing of prairies, more subtle changes also dramatically affect birds. Species may disappear when we interrupt natural disturbances by suppressing wildfires or trapping out beaver, or when we disrupt habitat with roads and housing developments. Askins challenges some of the assumptions that underlie current conservation efforts and offers concrete recommendations, based on sound ecological principles, for protecting the rich natural diversity of North America's birds.

Spiders: They are exquisitely beautiful and wildly repulsive. They are deadly and beneficial. And they are a source of great fascination--and boundless fear!--to kids of all ages. This wonderfully readable book explores the science and natural history of the spiders' world, taking in arachnids from the exotic black widows and tarantulas to all sorts of everyday and garden variety (literally) species. In an engaging manner, and with plenty of illustrations, Spiders" describes the highly individual life styles, variety, and appearance of these intriguing creatures. Who are their relatives? What are their families? How do they spin their webs? And how do they defend themselves? Spiders" answers all these questions and many more, about "stars" of the arachnid world, like the wolf spider and the brown recluse, as well as the lesser-known but no less interesting species.