What do you think?
Rate this book
How to See Nature
A beautifully lyrical look at the glories of British landscapes and wildlife, written by the Guardian's nature writer Paul Evans.
Even if you never get closer to nature than a small urban green space, Paul Evans’s wonderfully poetic tribute to British wildlife, fields, rivers, forests, hedges, and verges will enhance your understanding of the country’s flora and fauna and spark your imagination. Evans has crafted evocative essays that cover all types of ancient, migrant, and endangered species of flora and fauna. He explores everything from bats visible under city streetlights to the red grouse that live in the wild moors.
Even if you never get closer to nature than a small urban green space, Paul Evans’s wonderfully poetic tribute to British wildlife, fields, rivers, forests, hedges, and verges will enhance your understanding of the country’s flora and fauna and spark your imagination. Evans has crafted evocative essays that cover all types of ancient, migrant, and endangered species of flora and fauna. He explores everything from bats visible under city streetlights to the red grouse that live in the wild moors.
164 pages, Hardcover
Published November 6, 2018
2 people are currently reading
184 people want to read
About the author
Paul Evans
115 books7 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Best known as the author of the Guardian’s Country Diary, Paul Evans is a naturalist, university lecturer, broadcaster of natural-history documentaries and award-winning dramas for Radio 4, and performance poet. He writes for publications including BBC Wildlife, Geographical, The National Trust Magazine and Country Living; and his work appears in many anthologies. He has had his poetry set to music by an American folk group and even been the subject of an MA at a Belgian university. He lives with his family in Much Wenlock, Shropshire where he was born.
Best known as the author of the Guardian’s Country Diary, Paul Evans is a naturalist, university lecturer, broadcaster of natural-history documentaries and award-winning dramas for Radio 4, and performance poet. He writes for publications including BBC Wildlife, Geographical, The National Trust Magazine and Country Living; and his work appears in many anthologies. He has had his poetry set to music by an American folk group and even been the subject of an MA at a Belgian university. He lives with his family in Much Wenlock, Shropshire where he was born.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 15, 2018
How to See Nature (1940), a quaint and perhaps slightly patronizing book by Shropshire naturalist and photographer Frances Pitt, was intended to help city evacuees cope with life in the countryside. Recently Pitt’s publisher, Batsford, commissioned Shropshire naturalist Paul Evans to revisit the topic. The result is a simply lovely volume (with a cover illustration by Angela Harding and black-and-white interior drawings by Evans’s partner, Maria Nunzia) that reflects on the range of modern relationships with nature and revels in the wealth of wildlife and semi-wild places we still have in Britain.
He starts with his own garden, where he encounters hedgehogs and marmalade hoverflies. Of the latter he writes, “I remember being astonished when I was told the tiny, fragile creatures levitating like a cluster of pixels in my backyard may have flown there from the gardens of Marrakesh.” Other chapters consider night creatures like bats, weeds and what they have to offer, and the wildlife of rivers, common land, moors and woods. I particularly enjoyed a section on reintroduced species such as beavers and red kites, with Evans’s thoughts on rewilding projects. The book closes with an A–Z bestiary of British wildlife, from adders to zooplankton.
Throughout, Evans treats issues like tree blight, climate change and species persecution with a light touch. Although it’s clear that he’s aware of the diminished state of nature and quietly irate at how we are all responsible for the disasters of pollution and invasive species, he writes lovingly and with poetic grace. I would not hesitate to recommend this to fans of contemporary nature writing.
Favorite lines:
“the orb-weavers wait: sexual cannibals adorned in the extra-terrestrial glow of their pearl diadems, suspended in ethereal scaffolds woven from hundreds of glands controlled by their own sovereign will and unique metabolism”
“The last ‘woo-oooo’ of a tawny owl meets the first clockwork hiccup of a pheasant, then bird by bird in the scanty light, the songs begin”
He starts with his own garden, where he encounters hedgehogs and marmalade hoverflies. Of the latter he writes, “I remember being astonished when I was told the tiny, fragile creatures levitating like a cluster of pixels in my backyard may have flown there from the gardens of Marrakesh.” Other chapters consider night creatures like bats, weeds and what they have to offer, and the wildlife of rivers, common land, moors and woods. I particularly enjoyed a section on reintroduced species such as beavers and red kites, with Evans’s thoughts on rewilding projects. The book closes with an A–Z bestiary of British wildlife, from adders to zooplankton.
Throughout, Evans treats issues like tree blight, climate change and species persecution with a light touch. Although it’s clear that he’s aware of the diminished state of nature and quietly irate at how we are all responsible for the disasters of pollution and invasive species, he writes lovingly and with poetic grace. I would not hesitate to recommend this to fans of contemporary nature writing.
Favorite lines:
“the orb-weavers wait: sexual cannibals adorned in the extra-terrestrial glow of their pearl diadems, suspended in ethereal scaffolds woven from hundreds of glands controlled by their own sovereign will and unique metabolism”
“The last ‘woo-oooo’ of a tawny owl meets the first clockwork hiccup of a pheasant, then bird by bird in the scanty light, the songs begin”
September 24, 2019
The closest some people get to nature now days is the motorway verge seen at 70 (ish) mph. Some people don’t even have that opportunity at home, with gardens becoming an outdoor space that the wilder aspects are banished from. It is not a recent problem though as back in the 1940s, Shropshire naturalist and photographer Frances Pitt also wrote a book called How to See Nature, that was aimed at helping evacuees who were encountering the countryside for the first time. Evans, who is the Guardian nature writer, was asked by the same publisher as Pitt, to write a modern version of the book to appeal to people who are as nature deficient as those eighty years ago.
The best place to start looking for the natural world is your back garden, or if you aren’t fortunate to have a garden a local park is a good place. Evans is here to accompany you on the journey back to connect back to nature. He will take us from our local area where you can see all manner of creatures at night if you take the time to look, right up to the wild moors via our hedges, verges and woodlands in the search on our national wildlife. A glimpse of a small mammal that could have been a pine marten, the reality was it was probably a polecat, but Evans had that glimmer of hope. Pine martens were supposed to be only living in the wilds of Scotland but were actually right under peoples noses in select spots in England and Wales.
The point of the book is to get you to reset the way that you look at the world, take the time to step away from the modern distractions and get outside. I liked the list of flora and fauna that you could find in most locations in the UK. It is not an exhaustive list, but enough variety to give you a range of things to see with a small amount of effort. He has similar goals to Simon Barnes in Rewild Yourself, which would be a good companion volume to read with this. Evans has a lovely way of writing, evocative with an eye for the detail in the bigger picture. It has a stunning cover by Harding (The Salt Path Cover) and artwork inside by Maria Nunzia, so will look good on your shelf too.
The best place to start looking for the natural world is your back garden, or if you aren’t fortunate to have a garden a local park is a good place. Evans is here to accompany you on the journey back to connect back to nature. He will take us from our local area where you can see all manner of creatures at night if you take the time to look, right up to the wild moors via our hedges, verges and woodlands in the search on our national wildlife. A glimpse of a small mammal that could have been a pine marten, the reality was it was probably a polecat, but Evans had that glimmer of hope. Pine martens were supposed to be only living in the wilds of Scotland but were actually right under peoples noses in select spots in England and Wales.
The point of the book is to get you to reset the way that you look at the world, take the time to step away from the modern distractions and get outside. I liked the list of flora and fauna that you could find in most locations in the UK. It is not an exhaustive list, but enough variety to give you a range of things to see with a small amount of effort. He has similar goals to Simon Barnes in Rewild Yourself, which would be a good companion volume to read with this. Evans has a lovely way of writing, evocative with an eye for the detail in the bigger picture. It has a stunning cover by Harding (The Salt Path Cover) and artwork inside by Maria Nunzia, so will look good on your shelf too.
May 17, 2020
"How to see nature" by Paul Evans is a beautiful book both literally in terms of its thick cardstock pages as well as in its sophisticated prose. His writing of his observations of nature in the United Kingdom weaves in historical and literary references from TS Eliot to Ted Hughes. This non-fiction book and its style might not appeal to everyone, but I was utterly absorbed by it.
Some passages to share:
“The grey heron has a balletic elegance and despite the constant risk of stumbling into slapstick, becomes the harpoonist, reaching through its own spine to hurl the javelin of itself. “
"Around the quietly waiting birds the light is momentarily fierce; it glitters emerald on the moss, and silvers tussoks of rush. The heather appears dark and lifeless with only the ghosts of last summer's flowers."
"Much of the greenwood virtues are currently expressed through medicalised notions of wellbeing. Forest schools reconnect children suffering from Nature Deficit Syndrome; green gyms provide therapeutic exercise through woodland management; the health benefits of a walk in the woods is supported by what the Japanese call shinrin-yoku -- forest bathing: the phytoncides produced by trees to control microbial predation reduce depression and improve mental health in people.”
“Trees affect the parasympathetic and sympathetic nerves; they increase the production of serum adoponectin, a hormone responsible for combating obseity and metabolic disorders."
"Every return of an animal or plant is an ecological promise for the future. The deliberate reintroductions of beavers, red kites or large blue butterflies each strike against a nihilism that casts Nature as a patient in terminal decline. But what we have to remember is that these are wild creatures, not just symbols or tokens that can be brought back to right historical wrongs."
#howtoseenature #paulevans
#readingnationsg #whatareyoureadingsg
#bookstagrammer #bibliophile #bookreview #bookpost #lbbreads #ilovereading
Some passages to share:
“The grey heron has a balletic elegance and despite the constant risk of stumbling into slapstick, becomes the harpoonist, reaching through its own spine to hurl the javelin of itself. “
"Around the quietly waiting birds the light is momentarily fierce; it glitters emerald on the moss, and silvers tussoks of rush. The heather appears dark and lifeless with only the ghosts of last summer's flowers."
"Much of the greenwood virtues are currently expressed through medicalised notions of wellbeing. Forest schools reconnect children suffering from Nature Deficit Syndrome; green gyms provide therapeutic exercise through woodland management; the health benefits of a walk in the woods is supported by what the Japanese call shinrin-yoku -- forest bathing: the phytoncides produced by trees to control microbial predation reduce depression and improve mental health in people.”
“Trees affect the parasympathetic and sympathetic nerves; they increase the production of serum adoponectin, a hormone responsible for combating obseity and metabolic disorders."
"Every return of an animal or plant is an ecological promise for the future. The deliberate reintroductions of beavers, red kites or large blue butterflies each strike against a nihilism that casts Nature as a patient in terminal decline. But what we have to remember is that these are wild creatures, not just symbols or tokens that can be brought back to right historical wrongs."
#howtoseenature #paulevans
#readingnationsg #whatareyoureadingsg
#bookstagrammer #bibliophile #bookreview #bookpost #lbbreads #ilovereading
March 12, 2019
There are some lovely moments in this oh-so-English evocation of the disappearing countryside but I was a little disappointed. There’s more science here than poetry, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but the promised lyricism is as elusive as some of the shy wildlife, beetles, bugs and birds that the author loves and knows so well. It all runs out of puff a bit at the end with a bestiary bringing it to a close.
January 10, 2021
Very disappointed by this. Quite disjointed and often aimless, as well as suffering the all too common assumption that nature-readers are as interested in poetry as we are in nature. To be fair, I was probably looking for something a bit more practical, the title is quite misleading.
February 11, 2022
I really enjoyed reading about nature and wildlife in this book, I love the format and lay out of this book. The illustrations are absolutely beautiful. I will most likely read this book again and any other books by this author.
December 15, 2022
"Hi Paul,
I know you're busy, but I've been reading my hardcover How To See Nature.
I haven't read the bestiary, yet, but glanced through and looked at each illustration.
I would be proud to make a book so beautiful.
Disorganised notes as I went:
The introduction was wonderful - particularly your introduction to Maria, and the significance of seeing nature in light of your diagnosis of cataracts. I don't mean to condescend when I say I cried; a part of me felt you deserved vision more than me. Of course, that was an impossible thought, so I need to use my eyes more.
Lovely poem by Blake. I've thought the same... Never liked killing an insect. The Bosch hard cut to the segment on the hedgehog in The Garden of Delights was, well, delightful. I found myself empathising (not for the first nor seventieth time) with a hedgehog; victims of industrialization, of walls, gates, and cars. Creatures of the day treat creatures of the night like aliens.
And then the next chapter is on bats! How fitting! The infinitesimal pipes of the pipistrelle's echolocation... Such a wonderful collection of words. And you saw one, dissected! The way you described it is my favourite passage, yet. I'm reminded of a Bill Bryson with green compassion. I'm sure I know what that means.
Oh, wow, you just mentioned how nocturnal life is treat as alien after I wrote what I had! The parts on guanine got my mind whirring. And the Les Fleurs du Mal quote was lovely. And I'm certain the comma butterfly entered a Faustian arrangement. The Ragwort Tangent is packed with wonderfully prosed and dense passages. I'm learning a lot.
Maria's artwork for The Flow is my favourite so far (at least I believe and hope it is her work). The part on fovea was FASCINATING - I NEED to write about a kingfisher regarding human perception, at some point. And I'm wondering how the fovea of tortoise's differ from our own. I did some research and the Amyda sp. is the only turtle I can find with a fovea (though a turtle is not a tortoise). The reason I'm wondering is because of the part you wrote on shallow/deep foveas and their apertural, magnifying properties. It would better explain, via absurdism, how Tetsudo was capable of better drawing Pandolfo, and why Pandolfo was halted at the fovea.
Just an interesting idea...
Massive tangent.
The Salt Man... King of Infinite Liberty... I'm appropriating elements here down the line for my own works... It's too amazing. The Salt Man Leaps? Have you ever heard of the legend of the koi?
"...a probe voyaging the universe but despite his apparent liberty, his senses and memories tie him to a compulsion that reels him back to spawning streams as surely as any line hooked to his mouth."
Do Minnows taste death as we smell it? But then, the olfactory system comprises taste buds...
So, do we not also taste death in the air like the minnow?
"Although it looks hopeless, his relentlessness comes from the knowledge that he can overcome all opposing forces, so long as he leaps time to a standstill."
The onomatopoeia segment in The Flow was delightful, aha. I listened to you reading about a crow via a BBC Radio recording, and it was equally delightful, I showed a couple of people.
Black Bird of the Future, Craw Craw!
How peculiar, then, that I return to reading - chapter: The Commons - to you explaining a nightingale received its name via its darkness slicing song! Wild Moors was perhaps the chapter that made me saddest, with the discussions on shooting and hunting and game.
The Greenwood has been another favourite chapter. Robin Hood to As You Like It! I've been introduced to Nature Deficit Syndrome and shinrin-yoku which I'll keep in mind.
Also: Deadman's Cock.
Blight features my new favourite artwork - I'd want that on my wall.
I'll leave my notes here because only 20-pages remain until the bestiary, and this has gone on long enough!
Once, when I was sixteen, a friend of mine lifted a spider to a hole in the wall it had been scrambling for. He told me why it was doing it, and what hid in the hole. And I, again, realised I knew little. I'm in awe at what the natural writers can do; they are in a world bordering my own, glimpsed by listening and through proxy. At least, that's how it feels. I'm overwhelmed by the infinite variables at play. Nature is a beautiful thing that can only be appreciated by slowing down. No words do it justice, but you all come close. You are a heron, those moments eels; with words you break your studying to pluck an image from the stream.
Thank you for feeding me mind-eels!
Kajoch"
I know you're busy, but I've been reading my hardcover How To See Nature.
I haven't read the bestiary, yet, but glanced through and looked at each illustration.
I would be proud to make a book so beautiful.
Disorganised notes as I went:
The introduction was wonderful - particularly your introduction to Maria, and the significance of seeing nature in light of your diagnosis of cataracts. I don't mean to condescend when I say I cried; a part of me felt you deserved vision more than me. Of course, that was an impossible thought, so I need to use my eyes more.
Lovely poem by Blake. I've thought the same... Never liked killing an insect. The Bosch hard cut to the segment on the hedgehog in The Garden of Delights was, well, delightful. I found myself empathising (not for the first nor seventieth time) with a hedgehog; victims of industrialization, of walls, gates, and cars. Creatures of the day treat creatures of the night like aliens.
And then the next chapter is on bats! How fitting! The infinitesimal pipes of the pipistrelle's echolocation... Such a wonderful collection of words. And you saw one, dissected! The way you described it is my favourite passage, yet. I'm reminded of a Bill Bryson with green compassion. I'm sure I know what that means.
Oh, wow, you just mentioned how nocturnal life is treat as alien after I wrote what I had! The parts on guanine got my mind whirring. And the Les Fleurs du Mal quote was lovely. And I'm certain the comma butterfly entered a Faustian arrangement. The Ragwort Tangent is packed with wonderfully prosed and dense passages. I'm learning a lot.
Maria's artwork for The Flow is my favourite so far (at least I believe and hope it is her work). The part on fovea was FASCINATING - I NEED to write about a kingfisher regarding human perception, at some point. And I'm wondering how the fovea of tortoise's differ from our own. I did some research and the Amyda sp. is the only turtle I can find with a fovea (though a turtle is not a tortoise). The reason I'm wondering is because of the part you wrote on shallow/deep foveas and their apertural, magnifying properties. It would better explain, via absurdism, how Tetsudo was capable of better drawing Pandolfo, and why Pandolfo was halted at the fovea.
Just an interesting idea...
Massive tangent.
The Salt Man... King of Infinite Liberty... I'm appropriating elements here down the line for my own works... It's too amazing. The Salt Man Leaps? Have you ever heard of the legend of the koi?
"...a probe voyaging the universe but despite his apparent liberty, his senses and memories tie him to a compulsion that reels him back to spawning streams as surely as any line hooked to his mouth."
Do Minnows taste death as we smell it? But then, the olfactory system comprises taste buds...
So, do we not also taste death in the air like the minnow?
"Although it looks hopeless, his relentlessness comes from the knowledge that he can overcome all opposing forces, so long as he leaps time to a standstill."
The onomatopoeia segment in The Flow was delightful, aha. I listened to you reading about a crow via a BBC Radio recording, and it was equally delightful, I showed a couple of people.
Black Bird of the Future, Craw Craw!
How peculiar, then, that I return to reading - chapter: The Commons - to you explaining a nightingale received its name via its darkness slicing song! Wild Moors was perhaps the chapter that made me saddest, with the discussions on shooting and hunting and game.
The Greenwood has been another favourite chapter. Robin Hood to As You Like It! I've been introduced to Nature Deficit Syndrome and shinrin-yoku which I'll keep in mind.
Also: Deadman's Cock.
Blight features my new favourite artwork - I'd want that on my wall.
I'll leave my notes here because only 20-pages remain until the bestiary, and this has gone on long enough!
Once, when I was sixteen, a friend of mine lifted a spider to a hole in the wall it had been scrambling for. He told me why it was doing it, and what hid in the hole. And I, again, realised I knew little. I'm in awe at what the natural writers can do; they are in a world bordering my own, glimpsed by listening and through proxy. At least, that's how it feels. I'm overwhelmed by the infinite variables at play. Nature is a beautiful thing that can only be appreciated by slowing down. No words do it justice, but you all come close. You are a heron, those moments eels; with words you break your studying to pluck an image from the stream.
Thank you for feeding me mind-eels!
Kajoch"
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews