Animals Nonfiction Archives

Remembering African Wild Dogs

Wildlife Photographers United

by Margot Ragget et al

An absolutely stunning book that I read in one sitting, while waiting for my kid at a library event. I actually paged through it twice, to look at all the images a second time around. It’s from a series organized to raise awareness of wildlife species that are at risk of extinction. Wildlife photographers donated their work to be included in the book, aiming to produce the most beautiful, stunning collection ever. Proceeds go to support the animals in question- whether that be for research studies, habitat preservation, educating locals to the animals’ value, etc. There are a few sections of text describing the animals, the work done to help them, the importance of giving them space in our world. While the text is brief, it felt very eloquent. In terms of the wild dogs (one of my favorite animals ever since I read Innocent Killers by Jane Goodall and Hugo van Lawick as a teen) the book emphasizes their place in the ecosystem, reasons they have been reviled by people for so long, and yet are so little known (they travel almost constantly, far and very fast). There’s a bit about their life history and physiology, too. Much of this was familiar to me, but I didn’t know before that the wild dogs (also known as Cape hunting dogs or painted wolves- even though they’re not closely related to wolves-) only have four toes on each foot (having diverged from canines farther back in evolutionary time) and that they sneeze at each other when communicating excitement for the hunt!

Majority of the book is the photographs. And they are absolutely gorgeous. I love the ones of the young puppies. And there are some with beautiful golden gaze. Many showing moments of peace, camaraderie in the pack, fast action of the hunt. From some of the earlier text explaining how the brutal-looking method wild dogs use to kill their prey isn’t as terrible as it appears (the victim goes into shock and supposedly feels very little pain) I was really expecting to see at least one photo with some gore or the dogs feeding on a kill, but there wasn’t any of that. So I don’t need to give any fair warning that something might shock a viewer.

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 5/5

144 pages, 2021

Tags: 5/5- Loved It, Animals Nonfiction, Art, Current Reads

The Falcon Thief

a true tale of adventure, treachery, and the hunt for the perfect bird

by Joshua Hammer

About a very specific and rather obscure (to the best of my knowledge) crime: the illegal acquisition of eggs from nests of endangered birds of prey, for sale to falconers in foreign countries (chiefly in the Middle East). It seems to have a little bit of everything encircling this racket. A brief history of falconry and description of the sport. An in-depth exploration of several characters- both the man who became renowned for stealing falcon eggs, and the investigator who was determined to track him down, and several others involved as well. These sections a little tedious as admittedly I did not really care what cafe they sat in when the men met with someone, or what they ordered to eat, or what they were wearing. I was however fascinated by the details about why certain men found egg-collecting such an obsessive hobby, or how the thief first became involved in groups that studied and followed the habits of birds of prey, becoming very familiar with their nesting locations long before he started taking eggs. There’s a lot more in here, but what really stood out to me at the end were two things: the thief was such an affable man, knowledgeable and easy to talk to, that the men trying to pin him down for his crimes couldn’t help admiring him as a person. And that even though the thief was caught several times, convicted, and ceased his nefarious activities for years, eventually he would go back to it. He couldn’t stop, it seemed. There was some thrill of the challenge: could he reach distant nesting ledges in the arctic without being detected, could he get away with smuggling eggs containing live chicks on flights, etc. . .

Definitely a book I’ll want to read again someday, paper version. I am fairly sure my attention drifted away a few times and I missed something. Completed on 1/7/24.

Borrowed from the public library. Audiobook version, narrated by Matthew Lloyd Davies, 8 hours 23 min listening time

Rating: 4/5

317 pages, 2020

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads

first catch-up

My initial attempt to cover all the things I’ve read (listened to) and puzzled during my recovery time! My screen time is still limited, so this will be brief. I was in the middle of reading these two books when had the incident, hung onto them for weeks and finally realized I was going to run out of borrowing time before I could read again. So I turned them in, plus a waiting stack on my bedside table. Thus they’re considered Abandoned, though it was reluctant and unintentional so DNF is a better term, just one I haven’t used much on here.

Creature

by Shaun Tan
Collection of drawings and sketches by the author/artist. Delightful and whimsical and random. At least, they seemed random at first- but when you get to the very end pages there’s a little description and explanation by the artist, about what inspired the piece, or what other story it was a part of, or what he thinks about the depicted object. The intro and these end-pages explanation bits are lovely reading, it is so solidly insightful and makes me feel appreciative (of art). I need to get my hands on more Shaun Tan! and see the animations done from some of his books- I didn’t even know they existed, before. The artwork is all so much fun, even if some have sad or lonely overtones. Most of them are of everyday objects combined or personified into little beings that interact or have some symbolic meaning. Not quite sure how else to describe it. I had spent days poring over all the pictures, looked through them all at least twice, and then was super happy to find the text at the back to read about, but then I couldn’t. Someone else had this one on request so I turned it in having only read four or five pages of the explanations, but I want to borrow it again to go through the rest, and look at the drawings all over again, of course.

Abandoned 224 pages, 2022

The Last Elephants

compiled by Don Pinnock and Colin Bell

This thick, impressive coffee-table size book is all about the current state of elephants in Africa. As far as I can tell, the two compilers traveled the breadth of the continent collecting materials written about, and photographs taken of, elephants. The words are from conservationists, animal welfare workers, government policy makers, wildlife photographers, safari outfit organizers, big game hunting enthusiasts, field scientists, etc (probably some occupations I have got wrong and many others forgotten because I don’t have the book in front of me now). The photographs- many of them double-page spreads- are stunning and beautiful. The words are detailed, sober and expressive, though I have to admit some of them are on the other hand very straightforward and dry. The chapter written about policy makers and the problems caused when elephant populations cross boundaries of countries that have different ways of assessing and handling their numbers was particularly difficult to get through, if I recall. I did like best one chapter that was about two individual elephants, though now I can’t tell you anything about it. Personal stories always get me closer. And I was very struck by the section about how elephants and big trees co-exist. Namely, it was pointed out that the helpful work of people to provide more watering holes for elephants and other wildlife, actually has a negative impact on large trees- because if the elephants have easy access to water and stay in one place, they keep feeding on the same trees and damage them. In normal circumstances, they’d roam far between watering places, giving trees in one area time to recover and grow again, before they returned. And yet now they often can’t roam because of fences, roads, human habitation and other things blocking their path.

There’s writings in here about poaching, about the ivory trade, about conservation efforts, and the viewpoints of many different people involved with elephants in one way or another. I was just barely getting into this one- it was kind of slow reading already- when I had to pause. Definitely going to borrow this book again, too.

Abandoned 490 pages, 2019

Tags: 0/5- Abandoned, Animals Nonfiction, Art, Current Reads

Second-Chance Horses

True Stories of the Horses We Rescue and the Horses Who Rescue Us

by Callie Smith Grant

The stories in this book are pretty short- most just a few pages long, all with the theme of being rescued. Wide variety of situations and types, the common thread being (of course) horses, and that all the authors are women. They’re all good stories, that warm your heart. Some are about horses taken from abusive or neglectful situations, and brought back to health. One is about a horse adopted from the BLM program that rounds up mustangs to control the population numbers. There are horses with behavior problems that needed careful re-schooling, unhappy or unwell children and women who were helped by working with a horse, old horses that needed a companion in their retirement, younger ones that just hadn’t found quite the right owner yet, and so on. It was nice to see that not all the stories had a happy ending for the writer, per se. There was more than one story about a struggle to work with a certain horse, and it just wasn’t going well, so finally they sold the horse or found it a new home, all to the better. It’s not all strictly horses, either- there are quite a few donkeys featured, and one zebra! The people are all different too- from new riders to experienced ones, competitive professionals and those who simply enjoy trail rides. There are women who were on horseback since a young age, and others who learned it as a new skill well into adulthood. I liked all the stories, I just didn’t find them very memorable- when done reading, I couldn’t put my finger on any one in particular to summarize for you in detail. But that’s okay, it’s staying on my shelf for another read someday.

I received my copy from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program, in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: 3/5

192 pages, 2023

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads, Short Stories

Into the Nest

Intimate Views of the Courting, Parenting and Family Lives of Familiar Birds

by Laura Erickson and Marie Read

Exactly what the subtitle says. Lots of great photographs, details on how the featured bird species select a mate, build their nests, share parenting duties, feed the young, their development and how long it takes them to fledge, then become independent, etc. A bit on social structure, song types, migration patterns and other details as well. Most of the species in here are songbirds, but there’s also great blue herons, red-tailed hawks, pigeons, killdeer, herring gulls, mallards and great horned owls. I was delighted to come across a bunch of new facts.

Such as: robins in my area don’t really migrate. You think they’re gone all winter, but they’re just in scattered flocks traveling around to different food sources. They get noticed when the males start staking out individual territories on lawns in the spring again. Mourning doves build a nest so loosely woven that sometimes eggs fall out through the bottom of it! When you find a nest with eggs and no parent bird in sight, it’s probably not deserted. Many female birds don’t start incubating until all the eggs are laid- then they will hatch at the same time. Hummingbirds use spider silk in their nest construction, so it will stretch as the baby birds grow. Young hairy woodpeckers stack their heads on top of each other’s necks in the nest, and the one on top gets fed when the parent arrives. Then it moves its head down to the bottom, the next on top gets fed, and so on- so they all receive an equal amount of food (most hatchlings, the biggest beggar gets the most food and smaller ones fall behind in growth). Phoebes feed their older nestlings wasps and bees, which they first beat on branches to subdue (and possibly break off the stinger). Chickadees have a social hierarchy in their winter flocks, and pair up with mates that have the same position among the opposite gender. Nuthatches smear pine resin around the entrance to their nest, and sometimes smashed-up stinkbugs, too- apparently to deter predators. Mockingbirds never reuse a nest, they always build a new one. Eagles are known to build on the old nest year after year until it gets huge. And peregrine falcons habitually use the same ledges, generation after generation. One nest site in Australia had a heap of debris (excrement and food scraps) below the ledge with material at the bottom estimated to be 16,000 years old. Female chipping sparrows tend to nest in the same small area every year, but they don’t reuse the nest. Instead they might tear it apart and use the materials to build a new one.

And that’s just a small sample. I found it all very engaging to read about. Plus the pictures were just stellar.

Similar reads: Baby Birds: An Artist Looks Into the Nest by Julie Zickefoose, The Mating Lives of Birds by James Parry, What It’s Like to Be a Bird by David Sibley.

Borrowed from the public library.

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads

Astonishing Animals

Extraordinary Creatures and the Fantastic Worlds They Inhabit

by Tim Flannery and Peter Schouten

This book caught my eye several times on the library shelf (spanning months), finally I caved and brought it home. Delightful. It showcases a wide array of strange, unusual and rare animals- from quirky and frightening (deep sea creatures!) to just plain silly-looking (as noted by the author, ha). The text has snippets of information- where the animals live, how much or little (sometimes almost nothing) is known about them, what adaptations their odd appearances evolved for. Sometimes also unknown. Most stunning are the two-page illustrations of every specimen- meticulous in detail (and not just in the animals’ fur or shining eyes or textured skin, also the lichens and tree bark and whatever they’re posed on- so very lifelike)! I didn’t learn a whole lot about the animals that were new to me, except to realize now that hey, that creature exists in the world- but still I was wowed. Most fun is that the book features one animal that’s purely fictional. I guessed, and then handed the volume to my kid to look through and guess- we were both wrong! It wasn’t until later when I thumbed through the book a second time, enjoying the images all over again and typing into the computer every single one I didn’t know was real, that I figured it out. I knew of the tree kangaroo, the kakapo, tomato frog and morymid, the aye-aye and platypus and many birds-of-paradise, from reading or seeing pictures and documentaries about them before. But there were just as many I’d never heard of, much less seen pictures- and some of these are so rare, the internet doesn’t even have images, just a few bare descriptions or the same paintings from this book! I won’t tell you those names however, just in case you want to solve the puzzle for yourself.

Another curious thing is that this book has an interesting, variable format. Some of the pictures are very tall, and printed across the spread so the top of the image is the left of the lefhand page, bottom of the image is right of the righthand. Text flipped to read that way too, if you turn the whole book ninety degrees clockwise, you read it all down. Never saw that before!

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 4/5

206 pages, 2004

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads

Hit by a Farm

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Barn

by Catherine Friend

I really liked this book. It’s about the author’s forays into farming, with her female partner. A big concern they had starting their farm, was how people in the small town would react to a lesbian couple as neighbors. Nobody batted an eye. Much harder was learning the skills- they’d had grandparents that farmed, but didn’t have any direct experience themselves. The author was a writer, her partner wanted to start a farm and she was supportive, so they dived in together. One of them a bit reluctant to get her hands dirty, prone to anxiety and a tendency to be controlling. The other enthusiastic and brave (lots of dangerous equipment and situations!) about all things farming, but easily angry- at immediate problems, at her partner, at the world in general. The story is just as much about the difficulties their relationship suffers through, and how they work through that, as it is about farming. First they raise chickens, then try their hands at sheep and wine grapes. Trying to do it all with the least negative impact to the land, few pesticides and chemicals, etc (but not strictly organic). With lots of pitfalls and a steep learning curve. And the author’s personal struggles realizing how much the farm work takes away from her writing, and figuring out how to balance that without leaving her partner all the heavy work. I loved how brisk and down-to-earth this book was. Grimacing and laughing at the mishaps, delighting in the new lambs and other joys, the satisfaction of good work done. Very honest about how hard it all is. I could relate far better to this book than Dirty Chick– they have a lot in common, but the mindset and personality varies widely.

And then there’s all the animals! In addition to chickens and sheep, they had goats, llamas, ducks and geese. I was a bit baffled and disappointed not to hear more about the dogs. Several dogs from the start that were just pets, but then they got a young border collie. Reported feeling encouraged when he showed “eye” towards the sheep- but then no mention of the dog being used to move sheep, or getting trained- however lots of pages about the difficulties in herding sheep or catching them. I suppose they never found time to train the dog? or it didn’t work out? but there’s no explanation of that at all. I just found that a tad frustrating as a reader, because every time I read about how hard it was to catch an individual sheep or move them, I’d think: where’s that border collie? why isn’t he helping with this job. Would have liked to know.

Other similar books: The Bucolic Plague by Josh Kilmer-Purcell, The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball, Shepherds of Coyote Rocks by Cat Urbigkit, Thoughts While Tending Sheep by W. G. Ilefeldt. I know I’ve read others about keeping sheep, and being new to farming, but these are the ones that came immediately to mind.

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 4/5

240 pages, 2006

Tags: Animals Nonfiction, Bios / Memoirs, Current Reads

A Good Horse Has No Color

Searching Iceland for the Perfect Horse

by Nancy Marie Brown

This book is about Icelandic sagas and horses. The author tells how she first became interested in studying the sagas during university years, and took her husband to Iceland to rent out a summerhouse one year, where they would find solitude to work and write. She fell in love with the land, and its distinctive horses. I didn’t know how remarkably difference Icelandic horses are from other breeds (Arabians are too, in different ways). Also very different is how they are raised and trained, and the attitude of people towards them in Iceland. After visiting several times the author, a moderately experienced rider, decided she wanted to buy two Icelandic horses to take home to America. She returned alone specifically for this purpose. Which was made difficult by the fact that after some fifteen years spent studying the language, her conversational skills were still very basic. Her riding skills were above beginner level- but she wasn’t at all trained how to handle an Icelandic horse. She traveled around and rode many different horses to try them out, but couldn’t find one that she really connected with. And in spite of constantly repeating the phrase popular in Iceland that color doesn’t matter (a horse’s personality, willingness, smoothness of gait, etc being far more important in defining its quality) she kept being drawn to horses that had an attractive appearance (but other serious flaws that revealed upon handling). Then there was the tricky social aspect- her host expected her to purchase the mare he recommended (being known as a fine judge of horses) and was offended when she kept looking around. It was all very interesting to read about. The first half of the book was a bit less intriguing for me- having lots of asides about the language, and retelling bits of sagas that related to what the author was experiencing or thinking about. I liked it much better the further she got into testing out the horses, learning about what defined the Icelandic horse, trying to improve her skills in riding them, and so on. More about this was much to my liking. A great book.

Rating: 4/5

230 pages, 2001

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads, Travel/Adventure

Tracking Gobi Grizzlies

Surviving Beyond the Back of Beyond

by Douglas Chadwick

I don’t think I knew there are grizzly bears that live in the harsh, barren desert. There’s not many of them- thirty or forty it seems. The author, a renowed biologist, traveled to the Gobi region in Mongolia multiple times as part of a team studying the population of golden desert bears. Tracking them with difficulty, supplementing their food supply (a difficult adjustment for a scientist who his whole life had followed and urged the rule don’t feed the bears! but he explains why in this case it was okay and even essential), setting live-capture traps to take vital signs. Putting up barbed wire strands in key areas to snag hair for DNA samples. Meeting with local officials to help form laws and regulations protecting the bears and other animals, and with schoolchildren to teach, encouraging appreciation of their wildlife. Lots about the landscape of the desert, the vast sense of place, the cheerful optimism of the people around him, the culture. Made me remember other books I’ve read that take place in Mongolia and surrounding regions. I wish there’d been more about the bears than just glimpses, but the wealth of information they could gather from hair samples, dissecting scat, tracking collars and motion-activated cameras (often destroyed by the startled bears) was impressive and valuable. It’s nice to see this book end on an upnote, with the population remaining steady perhaps even increasing a bit, protections and scope of the study widening, and more people caring about the bears.

When the author mentioned his work on mountain goats, I thought, I have to read that book! and guess what I recalled that I did- several times actually- and it’s still among my very favorites – A Beast the Color of Winter. (I think I like it even better than this one, because it has more detail about the animals’ daily lives and habits, since he could habituate them to his presence and get very close). Chadwick is a great writer, the narrative moves along with vivid and definite prose, clear descriptions of the landscape and the work, warm and thoughtful portraits of his fellow men, and also a good dash of humor throughout. Here’s just a sample sentence: the landscape unfolding before us felt so elemental and ancient that the human habit of parsing time into minutes and then fussing over their loss had begun to seem like a mental disorder.

Another bit I particularly like: In science, being confused is an opportunity to admit that you don’t understand something and to start asking questions. The obstacle is that part of human nature urges us to avoid confusion and stick with the answers we already have, working to make them fit. The more you heed that inner voice, and the more you assume that the answers you have must be right, the lower your chances of learning something new.

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 4/5

288 pages, 2017

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads, Travel/Adventure

The Whale

Mighty Monarch of the Sea

by Jacques-Yves Cousteau

An older book about whales. It caught my attention at a library sale because I knew this author was famous for being among the first men to film underwater, making early documentaries of sea life. He invented the aqualung (very early type of scuba gear) and some other apparatus that enabled man to explore the oceans. This book is part of a series called The Undersea Discoveries of Jacques-Yves Cousteau, co-authored with Philippe Diolé. I have a few others- the one on sharks and another about coral reefs- and I’d really like to read the one about cephalopods, too.

This book describes a number of ocean expeditions the author made with his team, in pursuit of whales. And when I say pursuit, I really mean that. His attempts to film whales swimming free in the oceans were among the first ever done- they had to find the whales, get close enough and then stay in range. To not loose track of the whales when they dived, they tried to tag buoys on them with several-thousand-plus-foot lines, using light harpoons. Said over and over again that the whales would hardly feel it and were not injured, but I dare say they were bothered a lot, according to how quickly they swam away, and tried to avoid the boats. The team discovered they could hold individual whales in one place by circling them with an outboard motor- the ring of bubbles and noise disorientated the whales (presumably making it hard for them to use their echolocation). When they did this to calves, it’s no wonder the mother whales became aggravated. They found the whales were usually not at all aggressive, taking care to avoid divers in the water with their giant fins, and they often could approach close enough to grab hold and “go for a ride.” They seemed pretty thrilled with this. It was all in the attempt to get film footage of the whales, but honestly from a modern perspective, anyone doing this would be called out for harassing the animals.

That said, they did have some incredible encounters and learned some things about whales that nobody knew before- although the book feels seriously outdated to this reader. In different parts of the book they find and follow around humpbacks, grey whales, right whales, sperm whales, orcas, dolphins, finback whales and others. They rescued a few pelicans found injured, and one with a broken wing. They found a way into some secluded lagoons in Baja California where grey whales give birth and raise their young- didn’t witness a birth, but found many calves nursing, and were closely approached by calves while the mothers napped. Made an attempt to save an injured grey whale calf that had beached, the mother nowhere in sight- but it only lived a few days. There’s descriptions of the gear they used, the differences between the whales, what was known about whale physiology and social behavior (not much on this last point, and some of the information given is just wrong). I was mostly interested in parts about the orcas, to compare to the last book I read, but while Namu was mentioned, and the captivity of orcas criticized, this was only a few pages. There’s lots about the sounds whales make, especially the humpback songs, and how whales reacted to recordings played back to them. The author surmises that soon mankind will decipher the language of whales- well here we are fifty years later, not yet. But currently AI is being used to try and “decode” the sounds that sperm whales make- I have to admit I’m skeptical, but also find this quite exciting.

The author writes a lot in this book about how profoundly emotional he and the team members felt in the presence of the whales, that they often were observed and scrutinized, and in awe of the animals’ great size and apparent gentleness. Just by the way whales would look closely at them, they felt indicated a high intelligence. And they often related maneuvers the whales made as a group to shake off the trailing boats, which pointed at an obvious plan and collaboration among the pod or school. It’s kind of dismaying that with all the respect and admiration they claimed to feel towards the whales, they would still find it okay to lasso a calf, stand on a wild whale’s back, or try to ride it like a horse. I guess they thought it wouldn’t hurt and took pride in the daring of these antics, and I’m sad that this is what stood out to me upon closing the book, when really there are many interesting passages and firsthand observations that were at the time, stunning revelations about whales.

The pictures are somewhat blurred and grainy, but some are quite compelling in spite of that. I think my favorite are three photographs of a wild orca accepting fish from a diver’s hand.

Rating: 3/5

304 pages, 1972

Tags: Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads

Tag: Animals Nonfiction

Wildlife Photographers United

a true tale of adventure, treachery, and the hunt for the perfect bird

Creature

The Last Elephants

True Stories of the Horses We Rescue and the Horses Who Rescue Us

Intimate Views of the Courting, Parenting and Family Lives of Familiar Birds

Extraordinary Creatures and the Fantastic Worlds They Inhabit

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Barn

Searching Iceland for the Perfect Horse

Surviving Beyond the Back of Beyond

Mighty Monarch of the Sea

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