Artworks, manuscripts, printed works and wildlife sound recordings come together in this major compendium of the greatest and strangest representations of animals on record. Eighty detailed case studies highlight celebrated works, including John James Audubon's The Birds of America, Matthew Paris's Liber additamentorum, Maria Sibylla Merian's Metamorphosis (1705), Mark Catesby's The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, as well as letters from Charles Darwin, the Baburnama, translated by Mirza 'Abd al-Rahim Khan, Japanese printed works by Hirase Yoichiro (1914-1915), Arabic hippiatric texts and the work of contemporary artists including Levon Biss and Jethro Buck. Rich, newly photographed, illustrations bring these works to life, while interactive QR technology will allow readers to listen to recordings of the sound exhibits as they read. Expertly edited, this powerful collection of objects prompt us to consider the increasing importance of technology and data to our understanding of humanity's impact on the world's faunal inhabitants.

'The crossbill is a bonny bird An she sings wi a guid Scots tongue Jip-jip-jip A'll gie ye gip Gin ye meddle wi me nor ma young' As a result of his travels across the North American continent in the eighteenth century Alexander Wilson pioneered the science of ornithological writing and illustration, becoming an inspiration for most of the ornithological works which followed. This new book celebrates the artwork of Alexander Wilson by reproducing his illustrations alongside new poems in Scots by Hamish MacDonald, looking at the habits, habitats, and characteristics of birds.

Learn how to play mah-jong with this beautifully illustrated mah-jong set! Animal Mah-jong takes the traditional Chinese tile game and updates it for a new audience in this affordable card format. Rather than the traditional line drawings of bamboo and Chinese characters, it features Ryuto Miyake's beautiful animal illustrations - each suit features Asian animals from the land, sea and air. Get ready to pong, chow and kong like you never have before! Stunning illustrations by Ryuto Miyake Affordable new card format Screen-free fun - a high quality non-digital game for all ages Suitable for children and familes to play together

For Kurt Jackson (b.1961), 'Painting the sea could become an obsession, an entire oeuvre in its own right, an endless life absorbing task.' And, as this book attests, Jackson's dedication to capturing its constant shape shifting - stillness to thundering force, shallows to mysterious depths - have brought forth paintings that communicate the sea's ebb and flow, its magic and elusiveness. Kurt Jackson's Sea captures the beauty of the artist's constantly evolving relationship with one of nature's most challenging subjects. Two hundred colour images complement Jackson's reflections on his interactions with inspirational coastal landscapes - largely experienced in his native Cornwall, but stretching way beyond the county too.

Why do we pick up pebbles on the beach? What is it we see in them, and why do we take them home to display on our shelves? Is it their inherent beauty, their infinite variation, or simply their associations with a happy time and place? In this book - part social history and part practical guide - writer and pebble collector Christopher Stocks unearths the sometimes surprising story of our love-affair with pebbles, and considers how the way we see them today has been influenced over the years by artists, authors and even archaeologists. Printmaker Angie Lewin is widely admired for her alluringly stylish images of the natural world. She celebrates the experience of walking and sketching along the British coastline, often incorporating pebbles in her limited edition prints and paintings. Many of these feature in the book alongside a series of new images.

This volume examines the image-based methods of interpretation that pictorial and literary landscapists employed between 1500 and 1700. The seventeen essays ask how landscape, construed as the description of place in image and/or text, more than merely inviting close viewing, was often seen to call for interpretation or, better, for the application of a method or principle of interpretation. Contributors: Boudewijn Bakker, William M. Barton, Stijn Bussels, Reindert Falkenburg, Margaret Goehring, Andrew Hui, Sarah McPhee, Luke Morgan, Shelley Perlove, Kathleen P. Long, Lukas Reddemann, Denis Ribouillault, Paul J. Smith, Troy Tower, and Michel Weemans.

The artist Mark Hearld finds his inspiration in the flora and fauna of the British countryside: a blue-eyed jay perched on an oak branch; two hares enjoying the spoils of an allotment; a mute swan standing at the frozen water's edge; and a sleek red fox prowling the fields. Hearld admires such twentieth-century artists as Edward Bawden, John Piper, Eric Ravilious and Enid Marx, and, like them, he chooses to work in a range of media - paint, print, collage, textiles and ceramics. Work Book is the first collection of Hearld's beguiling art. The works are grouped into nature-related themes introduced by Hearld, who narrates the story behind some of his creations and discusses his influences. He explains his particular love of collage, which he favours for its graphic quality and potential for strong composition. Art historian Simon Martin contributes an essay on Hearld's place in the English popular-art tradition, and also meets Hearld in his museum-like home to explore the artist's passion for collecting objects, his working methods and his startling ability to view the wonders of the natural world as if through a child's eyes.

Elinor De Wire has been writing about lighthouses and their keepers since 1972. During that time she found that hundreds of lighthouse animals wandered into her research notes and photo collection. This book is the story of all these cold-nosed, whiskered, wooly, hoofed, horned, slithery, buzzing, feathered, and finned keepers of the lights. Where else would a dog learn to ring a fogbell; a cat go swimming and catch a fish for its supper; or a parrot cuss the storm winds rattling its cage? Who other than a lightkeeper would swim a cow home, tame a baby seal, adopt an orphan alligator, send messages via carrier pigeons, or imagine mermaids coming to visit? The Lightkeepers' Menagerie gathers together animal stories from lighthouses all around the world, tales of happiness and sadness, courage and cowardice, tragedy and comedy, even absurdity. Sometimes, fur, feathers, and fins tell the best tales.

The Birds of America is one of the best known natural history books ever produced and also the most valuable - a complete set sold at auction in December 2010 for GBP7.3 million, which is a world record for a book. First published in double elephant size (approximately a metre tall) in the first half of the nineteenth century, it is famous for its stunning life-size illustrations of birds set within landscaped backgrounds. The book was issued inparts over 11 years and only around 200 completed sets were ever produced. Less than 120 of these survive today, locked away in museums, galleries and private collections around the world. To create this edition of Audubon's masterpiece, the Natural History Museum's own original edition was disbound and each of the 435 beautiful hand-coloured prints was specially photographed. The artworks are accompanied by the scientific descriptions that were used in the original The Birds of America and there is also a new introduction by David Allen Sibley.