Showing titles in Outdoors & Nature

The wren is a paradox of a bird. On the one hand wrens are ubiquitous. They are Britain’s most common bird, with eight-and-a-half million breeding pairs and have by far the loudest song in proportion to their size. They also thrive up and down Britain and Ireland: from the smallest city garden to remote offshore islands. Yet many people are not sure if they have ever seen a wren. Perhaps because the wren is so tiny, and so busy, always on the move.

Through the seventies and into the mid-eighties, a cohort of young climbers challenged the siege mentality of their seniors on high mountains in the Greater Ranges with fast moving, lightweight expeditions run on a shoestring. Brian Hall was one of them and, in High Risk, he describes their daring adventures and the counterculture they lived within, their rivalries and relationships, and the terrible price many of them paid. 

‘A truly powerful paean to the night sky’ CAROLINE EDEN, author of Black Sea ________________________________________________________________ At a time of personal crisis, travel writer and ‘dark sky’ advocate Megan Eaves-Egenes turned to the stars for solace. But those same stars, which...

'An epic quest - in which the journey is at least as entertaining as the end result' - Stephen Moss, author of Ten Birds That Changed the World 'Humorous, touching and refreshingly unsentimental' - Colin Thubron, author of Shadow of the Silk Road 'Highly entertaining and gloriously obsessional'...

This Is Planet Earth is dedicated to the wonders of planet Earth, the most amazing place in the known universe. The ancient Greeks called it Gaia, the Romans Terra. We know it simply as Earth, the planet we call home. And what a planet it is. Formed around 4.6 billion years ago from the debris of the big bang and long-dead stars, at first it was nothing special, but somehow it evolved to become the most amazing place in the known universe.

Fennec foxes’ ears can be up to half as long as their bodies. They use them to track movement across the Sahara Desert, including under the sand. In this episode, we follow a fox as he meanders home to his family through the sand dunes as they slowly shift with the wind.

The number one Sunday Times bestseller. Read by the author, Christian Lewis. 'Bursting with positivity and hope' – Ben Fogle Walking saved his life. Now it will help find him a family. In the follow-up to Finding Hildasay, with his dog by his side, former paratrooper Christian Lewis takes his...

Is there a universal language of love, a "kinship with all life" that can open new horizons of experience? Example after example in this unique classic—from "Strongheart" the actor-dog to "Freddie" the fly—resounds with entertaining and inspiring proof that communication with animals is a wonderful, indisputable fact. All that is required is an attitude of openness, friendliness, humility, and a sense of humor to part the curtain and form bonds of real friendship.

A unique biography of a homeless man and a complete portrait of the hidden underclass. ‘So here it is, my attempt at the story of Stuart Shorter, thief, hostage taker, psycho and sociopath street raconteur, my spy on how the British chaotic underclass spend their troubled days at the beginning...

Perfect for readers of Jon Krakauer and Douglas Preston, this "authentic and encyclopedic" book examines real-life cases of those who vanish in the wilderness without a trace (Roman Dial)—and those eccentric, determined characters who try to find them. These are the stories that defy...

Far from being a conventional 'how to' guide, this book is about the simple fundamental principles of fishing - a mindset for success. In other words, how to think like a fish. After starting to fish in rural England more than fifty ago, and going on to become a captor of large, wily carp in his...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Kings of the Yukon by Andy Weymouth, read by Charlie Anson. The Yukon river is over 2,000 miles long, flowing northwest from Canada through the Yukon Territory and Alaska to the Bering Sea. Every summer, hundreds of thousands of King salmon migrate the...

Reveals the profound influence of the Denisovans and their hybrid descendants upon the flowering of human civilization around the world Traces the migrations of the sophisticated Denisovans and their interbreeding with Neanderthals and early human populations more than 40,000 years ago ...

The story of the author and his wife's two-month safari in East Africa in the 1950s. Ruark's philosophies are intertwined in the hunting stories to make unforgettable listening.

Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than $200. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, atop Maine's Mount Katahdin, she sang the first verse of "America, the Beautiful" and proclaimed, "I said I'll do it, and I've done it."

If you are at all interested in life on our planet, then you need to know about insects. They are the most successful group of animals ever to have lived on Earth. Making up three quarters of all animal species, insects conquered the planet long ago. They were among the very first animals to appear on land and were the first to take to the air. Their total biomass is at least 10 times that of all humans and our livestock combined.

Reaching the top of the world in 1953 was one of the most significant achievements in the history of human endurance.

Brought to you by Penguin. Of all the many things humans rely on plants for, surely the most curious is our use of them to change consciousness: to stimulate, calm, or completely alter the qualities of our mental experience. In This Is Your Mind On Plants, Michael Pollan explores three very...

Clover Stroud's idyllic childhood in rural England was shattered when a horrific riding accident left her mother permanently brain damaged. Just 16, she embarked on a journey to find the sense of home that had been so savagely broken. Travelling from gypsy camps in Ireland to the rodeos of West Texas and then to Russia's war-torn Caucasus, Clover eventually found her way back to England's lyrical Vale of the White Horse.

What is it like to be a dog? A bat? Or a dolphin? To find out, neuroscientist Gregory Berns and his team began with a radical step: they taught dogs to go into an MRI scanner - completely awake. They discovered what makes dogs individuals with varying capacities for self-control, different value systems, and a complex understanding of human speech. And dogs were just the beginning. In What It's Like to Be a Dog, Berns explores the fascinating inner lives of wild animals from dolphins and sea lions to the extinct Tasmanian tiger.