MOTHER NATURE: Animal Parents and Their Young
By Candace Savage
Sierra Club Books, $27.50
There’s nothing cuter than a baby critter, and this in-depth look at parenting among the furred and feathered crowd doesn’t disappoint in its scores of adorable color photos. But the emphasis is on what it takes to be a good parent in the animal kingdom, where the task of teaching crucial survival skills and family values most often falls to mom. (Males reportedly assist with infant care in only 5 percent of mammalian species, including California deer mice and the Barbary macaque.) For the littlest critters, life isn’t always pretty. Newborn walrus pups, for example, can be trampled and crushed as sex-crazed adult males heave their ponderous bulk at walrus mothers in a postpartum mating frenzy.
PENGUINS OF THE WORLD
By Wayne Lynch
Firefly Books, $35
To most people, these flightless birds are best known for their tuxedo-like plumage, comical gait and fondness for frozen climes. To author-photographer Wayne Lynch, who spent eight years and traveled 130,000 miles researching and photographing this ancient order of birds, penguins are part of a complex and fascinating seabird society that stretches from the Antarctic to the equator. Penguins hug, kiss, quarrel, steal, provide communal day care for offspring and more. Though the birds are prey to a variety of predators, Lynch argues that their most deadly challenge may be pollution wrought by man. Every year, more than 40,000 Magellan penguins living along Argentina’s coast die as a direct result of oil pollution leaked from ships and pipelines.
THESE RARE LANDS: Images of America’s National Parks
By Stan Jorstad
Simon & Schuster, $40
St. Charles-based photographer Stan Jorstad, long recognized for his panoramic nature scenes, first experienced the American wilderness while training as a serviceman in the Rocky Mountains during World War II. Since then he has traveled extensively, camera in hand, in all 54 of America’s national parks in search of scenic splendor. This dramatic collection of 145 color shots, including 50 panoramic photographs, showcases the beauty and majesty of America’s natural areas, from the red rock formations of Utah’s Bryce Canyon National Park to the lava-swept terrain of Hawaii’s Volcanoes National Park. Poet and essayist Mark Strand contributed a brief introduction and commentaries, and actor-environmentalist Robert Redford penned an even briefer foreword, but the photos speak far louder and more eloquently than any words could.
EYE TO EYE
By Frans Lanting
Taschen, $39.99
For those who like their animal and bird photos really big, this oversize volume has plenty to offer. Longtime wildlife photographer Frans Lanting’s 129 portraits of more than 70 species throughout the world are handsomely showcased in a foot-high format. In a photographer’s notes section at the back of the book, the nomadic Lanting provides brief commentaries on each shot and, sometimes, the efforts that were involved in achieving it–including living among animals or birds in remote areas for weeks and months at a stretch.
SECRETS OF THE OCEAN REALM
By Michele and Howard Hall
Carroll & Graf/Beyond Words, $39.95
Thanks to innovative technology in the form of a closed-circuit, mixed-gas rebreather, this husband-and-wife team of marine wildlife cinematographers was able to stay submerged for 12 hours at a time while filming and photographing deep-sea ecosystems throughout the world. Companion volume to the 1997-1998 PBS series by the same name, this rare glimpse of the undersea world pairs more than 100 eerily beautiful color photos with first-person chronicles of the delights–and dangers–encountered in decades of diving.
SONGBIRDS: Celebrating Nature’s Voices
By Ronald Orenstein
Sierra Club Books, $35
Making up half of the avian population, songbirds are found on every continent and in virtually all environments, from faraway rainforests to suburban back yards. More than 100 tweeters and trillers are pictured in this entertaining examination of songbird behavior, which can border on the bizarre. The male satin bowerbird of Australia frantically festoons its huge bachelor nest with any blue object it can find or filch from rivals (females consider nest decor highly important and prefer a mate who has amassed vast quantities of blue feathers, ribbons and bottlecaps). Songbirds can be smart as well as sexy; the woodpecker finch of the Galapagos routinely uses a cactus spine to extricate wood-boring grubs from trees. Closer to home, for those who want to attract more back-yard songbirds, scientists say you can’t go wrong with a mix of small, black oil-type sunflower seeds and white proso millet.
THE NATURAL HERITAGE OF INDIANA
Edited by Marion T. Jackson
Indiana University Press, $39.95
Millions of years ago, the land now known as Indiana was located along the equator, submerged much of the time beneath water and home mostly to tropical sea creatures. A lot has happened on the environmental front since then, and much of it is chronicled in this monumentally comprehensive, 482-page survey of Indiana’s natural history, resources and ecological challenges. Published in association with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources and the Indiana Academy of Science, the team effort includes 58 wide-ranging essays by naturalists and educators and nearly 500 color photos of native flora and fauna, plus maps, guides and a glossary. For those interested in Indiana’s natural heritage–and those who would preserve it–this is must reading and an indispensible reference.
IMAGES OF THE WILD
By Carl R. Sams II and Jean Stoick
Sleeping Bear Press, $45
A Michigan-based husband and wife team who specialize in photographs of North American wildlife, Sams and Stoick take the same artistic approach to the smallest of critters–a ground squirrel munching on a dandelion stem or a chipmunk with acorn-stuffed cheeks–as they do to a majestic bull moose or black bear. The result is an especially charming collection of nature photos, many of them accompanied by Sams’ brief, first-person comments on the circumstances surrounding the shot.
THE WORLD OF THE MONARCH BUTTERFLY
By Eric S. Grace
Sierra Club Books, $27.50
Easily recognized by its vivid orange-and-black wings, the monarch butterfly is a familiar summer visitor to back yards and wildflower fields throughout America. Come fall, the butterflies embark on the longest migration of any insect, covering nearly 2,500 miles in three months en route to a small forested area in the mountains near Mexico City. This closeup look at the monarch life cycle and the threats the butterflies face from logging is illustrated with 55 color photos.
