X

Small Creatures and Ordinary Places: Essays on Nature

Product ID : 13448028


Galleon Product ID 13448028
Model
Manufacturer
Shipping Dimension Unknown Dimensions
I think this is wrong?
-
2,039

*Price and Stocks may change without prior notice
*Packaging of actual item may differ from photo shown

Pay with

About Small Creatures And Ordinary Places: Essays On Nature

Product Description Small Creatures and Ordinary Places reveals to us the beauty and value of hornets, bats, katydids, mice, cicadas, and other tiny dwellers in our own backyards. Young, a renowned expert on butterflies and cicadas of the American tropics, records in these charming essays his keen observations of the natural world as he walks through an urban woods near the Lake Michigan shore, or sits on his deck facing his backyard, or gazes at a field of corn stubble in autumn. He invites us to venture into our own yards, neighborhood parks, fields, and forests and pause there . . .  to look and to listen.    Small creatures have unique and interesting stories to tell us, Young points out. Their brief life cycles illustrate the intricate workings of a bigger clock driving the seasons, and they dominate the larger web of life in which humans are but a strand. Far too often they are ignored, taken for granted, reviled, or misunderstood. Even now, Young writes, as we move into a new millennium as a species and the technological pace of our existence further quickens, we can gain much from appreciating nature close at hand, despite how steadily it is being pushed aside. About the Author Allen M. Young is curator of zoology and vice president of collections, research, and public programs at the Milwaukee Public Museum. His essays on nature have appeared in the Chicago Tribune Magazine, Milwaukee Journal, Miami Herald, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Sun-Times, and Wisconsin Natural Resources.  He is the author of several books on the natural history of the tropics, including The Chocolate Tree, Sarapiqui Chronicle, and Lives Intertwined. He also prepared a revised edition of the Golden Guide to Insects, a book that in an earlier edition inspired his boyhood fascination with the life cycles of insects. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. "On this day in April, the earth is warming up. Pockets of snow lie about, though the air is warm and the sun is bright. Over to the left some old birches stand sedately, their trunks pock-marked with woodpecker holes, some oozing sap. An oozing, smelly sap flow from an old birch acts as a collecting spot, a watering hole, for winter-tired, angle-wing butterflies such as the mourning cloak, bees, and flies, but also an occasional newly awakened queen bald-faced hornet. Ah! A brownish butterfly just lit on a birch about twenty feet away. Edging closer, I see it walking around, flapping its wings. It is a mourning cloak."