The Complete Naturalist

701 Pages·2015·120.28 MB·English

by  Nick Baker

I wrote this book in the memory of all the mentors, the old guard of
naturalists who taught me so much, but more importantly for the new
wave, the guardians of the future, to whom we hand over the baton. I
include my own little naturalist in this number; Elvie this book is for you.
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
The essential hardware: equipment
Feathered and flighty: birds
Big game: mammals
The earth creepers: reptiles and amphibians
Fish fantastic
Spineless wonders: invertebrates and insects
Getting botanical: plants and allies
Going further
Further reading
Image credits

Foreword
Having spent some of the most enjoyable years of my life researching,
writing and filming The Amateur Naturalist with my late husband, Gerald
Durrell, I was delighted to be asked to write this foreword for Nick Baker’s
The Complete Naturalist and eager to see the finished manuscript. How
was Nick going to handle the vast subject of natural history, what exciting
new ideas and techniques had he come across, would he have had as
much fun as Gerry and I did putting the information together? Did he
hope, as we hoped, that a generation of readers would take the book to
their hearts and learn to cherish nature and become part of the
movement to protect it?
My keen anticipation was hugely rewarded, and I was enticed into the
natural world all over again by this book. It begins very sensibly with what
equipment you need as an amateur naturalist, offering tips as to how to
choose and use it, from binoculars and hand lenses to notebooks and
clothing. It then leads you logically through the animal and plant
kingdoms: mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, invertebrates and
plants. You get a solid grounding in what to look for and how to observe
it, but Nick also grabs your attention with unusual facts – how to tell a
right-handed from a left-handed squirrel, for example – punctuated with
the occasional hysterically funny personal reminiscence. The activities he
suggests are creative and fun, such as recognising bird calls in the dawn
chorus, a foolproof method for rearing tadpoles, what you do to preserve
a spider’s web. The projects are all safe and eco-friendly as well.
Nick has a deft style and quirky sense of humour that brings to life the
animals and plants he is writing about. More than anything, he makes
you want to spend time outdoors becoming a nature detective. He
teaches you how to pick up and interpret signs that reveal an animal’s
behaviour, and to gather clues that will unravel ecological mysteries.
This is an updated and expanded version of Nick’s The New Amateur
Naturalist, and I am convinced that this book is more important today, ten
years later, than ever before. We humans absolutely must understand
the natural world. We need to know what its components are and how
they come together to make operational ecosystems. We must
appreciate how the ecosystems in turn influence each other to make the
whole planet tick. Otherwise, the rate at which we change the natural
order of things will outpace our ability to correct our environmental
mistakes, let along avoid making them in the first place. We can already
see our eco-blunders wherever we look – severe floods and droughts
and actual and imminent extinctions of animals and plants are examples
of the consequences of the human ‘footprint’ on the planet. But if
decisions which impact on the environment are made by people who
understand and cherish the natural world, then our tread will be lighter
and the planet a more hospitable place for all its inhabitants in the future.
The more youngsters are encouraged to pursue natural history, the
more likely it is that they, as the decision-makers of the future, will make
the right choices.
Lee Durrell
19 December 2014

Introduction
For as long as I can remember I have been mesmerised by plants and
animals, and not just the living, breathing ones. Everything about them,
feeding signs and other evidence they leave behind, even their dead
bodies can tell us so much about them. But although I have been an
amateur naturalist all my life, to this day I continue to learn how and
where to look at the living world. That is really what this book is about –
using my experiences and the tricks of the trade that I have amassed
over the years to gain more insight into the world we live in.
My interest started as soon as I could crawl and pretty soon I was
putting my mother through situations no mother can be prepared for:
giant silk moths in the wardrobe, tarantulas under the bed and the
countless dead animals I would find while out and about and bring home
to dismantle at leisure – a form of behaviour my family found particularly
disturbing! But to me there was very little difference between wishing to
see and understand the internal workings of an animal and my brother
pulling a lawn-mower engine to pieces for the same reason.
Through those dark, misunderstood times, a wonderful book called The
Amateur Naturalist by Gerald and Lee Durrell became my friend, inspiring
me to look, investigate and satisfy my natural curiosity. That book was a
major influence on my becoming a naturalist, and it was very much the
inspiration behind this one. I am deeply grateful to Lee Durrell for
providing such a generous foreword to The Complete Naturalist.
Things haven’t changed much since those early days, despite the fact
that I am now a responsible adult with my own house – my home is still
stuffed full of natural curios, both living animals and the inevitable
collections of debris, skulls, bones and feathers. To me this hands-on
approach is totally in keeping with the ethos of this book. You will never
really understand something by looking at pictures and writing. Just as
you need to stroke a feather to comprehend what an extraordinary
combination of form and function it is, you also need to turn a skull over
in your hands if you really want to appreciate the beauty of this
remarkable collection of bones.