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Springwatch: The 2019 Almanac
Explore the world outside your window. For 13 years the BBC's Springwatch and its sister programs, Autumnwatch and Winterwatch , have been bringing the best of Britain’s wildlife into our homes. Now The 2019 Almanac offers the perfect guide for anyone looking to get out and explore the wonders of nature just outside their back door. Taking you month by month through the coming year, the almanac combines compelling stories with practical guidance that will inspire anyone to start exploring. It has all the information you need to discover the natural wonders around you, from how to identify animal tracks and bird nests to the best time to witness starling murmurations and mayflies hatching. Complete with monthly daylight and rainfall charts and beautifully illustrated with black and white line drawings, The Springwatch Almanac is the ideal companion for every nature lover.
- GenresNatural HistoryAnimals
352 pages, Hardcover
Published September 20, 2018
8 people are currently reading
19 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 10, 2025
I was really pleasantly surprised by this. I thought it was going to be dry but it was very well written and absolutely full of fascinating facts about british wildlife. it goes month by month and includes things like most sunlight or most rain in the four nations of the UK for that month, or sunrise and sunset times for major cities for that month, etc. which I mostly skipped over.
but the facts were so cool. just opening it at random it's talking about purple emperor butterflies in the first two weeks of july when the males defend their treetop territories so aggressively a butterfly will chase a buzzard who comes into their airspace. then there is this sentence: "up there, in and above the canopy, they refuel on oozing oak sap or honeydew secreted by aphids, but occasionally drop down to the forest floor, particularly in the early morning, to supplement their diet with salts and minerals from animal droppings, rotting corpses, and the edges of rain puddles."
just many many interesting facts. moles have a toxin in their saliva that can paralyze earthworms and they will store a pantry of sometimes hundreds of paralyzed worms to eat. the hyphae of oyster mushrooms have an adhesive coating that sticks round worms to them, they secrete a narcotic that subdues the worm, and then digest it with enzymes. birds have a syrinx rather than a larynx and can vocalize during both inhalation and exhalation, unlike humans.
here was something really interesting to me, talking about sparrowhawks hunting songbirds and how they aren't responsible for diminishing songbird populations because if all the songbirds who hatched survived until winter, there wouldn't be enough food to go around, and about a third of them will starve or freeze. sparrowhawks need to catch one third of songbirds to feed themselves, so they are actually taking the number of birds that would die during their first winter anyway. thinking about that tight a relationship between populations of predators and prey makes me think about subsistence hunters, indigenous tribes and the animals they killed to live on, the idea of being part of this very well-balanced system that obviously modern humans have fallen out of. it's another point of view to look at predators and prey from.
the book also has tips on what wildlife to look for during each month and where you can see them (names of nature reserves and other localities), information about migrating birds, how to identify different british bat species, and follows the chosen species of foxes through the year, saying what they are doing each month. it seems that this 2019 edition was the only one ever published, which is too bad, because I feel like if they had had enough information to put this out every year, you could learn an awful lot by reading each year's edition.
but the facts were so cool. just opening it at random it's talking about purple emperor butterflies in the first two weeks of july when the males defend their treetop territories so aggressively a butterfly will chase a buzzard who comes into their airspace. then there is this sentence: "up there, in and above the canopy, they refuel on oozing oak sap or honeydew secreted by aphids, but occasionally drop down to the forest floor, particularly in the early morning, to supplement their diet with salts and minerals from animal droppings, rotting corpses, and the edges of rain puddles."
just many many interesting facts. moles have a toxin in their saliva that can paralyze earthworms and they will store a pantry of sometimes hundreds of paralyzed worms to eat. the hyphae of oyster mushrooms have an adhesive coating that sticks round worms to them, they secrete a narcotic that subdues the worm, and then digest it with enzymes. birds have a syrinx rather than a larynx and can vocalize during both inhalation and exhalation, unlike humans.
here was something really interesting to me, talking about sparrowhawks hunting songbirds and how they aren't responsible for diminishing songbird populations because if all the songbirds who hatched survived until winter, there wouldn't be enough food to go around, and about a third of them will starve or freeze. sparrowhawks need to catch one third of songbirds to feed themselves, so they are actually taking the number of birds that would die during their first winter anyway. thinking about that tight a relationship between populations of predators and prey makes me think about subsistence hunters, indigenous tribes and the animals they killed to live on, the idea of being part of this very well-balanced system that obviously modern humans have fallen out of. it's another point of view to look at predators and prey from.
the book also has tips on what wildlife to look for during each month and where you can see them (names of nature reserves and other localities), information about migrating birds, how to identify different british bat species, and follows the chosen species of foxes through the year, saying what they are doing each month. it seems that this 2019 edition was the only one ever published, which is too bad, because I feel like if they had had enough information to put this out every year, you could learn an awful lot by reading each year's edition.
April 22, 2019
I really did like this book. Interesting and factual, the guide allows its knowledge to pour out. Very interesting.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews