CAN a photograph truly be worth a thousand words? Yes, when it is taken by
someone with the perceptive eye of David Woodfall. Natural Heartlands: The
Landscape, People and Wildlife of Britain and Ireland (Swan Hill,
£24.95, ISBN 1853105589) is a visual delight and contains some of the most
exquisite landscape shots of the British Isles I have seen for a long time.
Couple these beautifully composed pictures with Kenneth Taylor’s perceptive text
and you have a handsome volume that is more than just another coffee-table
book.
Each of Woodfall’s shots tells a story. A wonderfully evocative landscape of
an upland farm in North Wales captures the apparently untouched spaciousness of
the hills perfectly. But things aren’t what they appear to be: the caption
points out how the hay meadows have been converted to silage pasture. Suddenly,
you spot the tractors, busy cutting that silage. Reading the text you discover
how “the ubiquitous march of silage” has virtually destroyed the traditional,
wildlife-rich hay meadows of England and Wales.
Pictures also tell the story in Alaska (Penguin Studio, $50,
ISBN 0670870943). John Pezzenti’s scene-setting text is all too brief, but does
give you an idea of the challenge of trying to photograph wildlife in a harsh
land.
The collection of photographs is tremendous, but the book’s designers have
not done Pezzenti’s work justice. Too many of the best photographs are given
double-page spread treatment, with the inevitable fold across the middle. And it
jars the eye to see a tiny Townsend’s warbler reproduced many times larger than
life size. It is also poor editing to find a snipe captioned as a dowitcher, and
a semi-palmated plover as a ringed plover.
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Ringed plovers don’t occur in Alaska, but they do in London. If you turn to
Dominic Mitchell’s Where to Watch Birds in the London Area (A&C
Black, £12.99, ISBN 0713638680), you will discover where best to see them.
The London area is surprisingly rich in birds, thanks to a wide diversity of
habitats. About 345 species have been recorded within a 10-kilometre radius of
St Paul’s Cathedral. Mitchell has covered all the key sites with detailed and
well-written accounts, always including information on when to go and how to get
there. Maps are provided for most of the major sites, while Jan Wilczur’s line
drawings do much to enliven the text. It is a shame that the publisher’s budget
didn’t extend to better-quality paper, a site index and a more durable cover for
what is sure to be a hard-working reference book.
Follow London’s river, the Thames, upstream to Goring and you come to the
area where James Monk penned the essays for Birds for All Seasons (Pica
Press, £12.95, ISBN 187340364X). The subtitle, “Chronicles from the Thames
Valley” is misleading for Monk’s subjects range from North American chimney
swifts to Pallas’s sandgrouse from Asia, though he writes at greater length
about typical English birds such as song thrushes and herons. Robert Gillmor’s
drawings add much to the charm of this little book, which is just the job for
putting by the bed in your guest room.
By contrast, volume 3 of the Flora of North America.
Magnoliophyta: Magnoliidae and Hamamelidae(Oxford University Press,
£65, ISBN 0195112466) is no bedtime read: it boasts almost 600 fact-filled
pages, with not a single colour illustration and precious few black-and-white
line drawings. On the other hand, each species account is clear and concise,
with a generously large type that is easy on the eye. The authors’ laudable aim
is to make the book accessible to both botanists and nonbotanists, but the
omission of colour plates is a disappointment. Volumes 1 and 2 were published in
1993; a formidable 27 more are promised.
