Matthew Oates

In Pursuit of Butterflies (eBook, ePUB)

A Fifty-year Affair

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

The butterflies of Britain, in the words of one of their greatest champions.

Matthew Oates has led a butterflying life. Naturalist, conservationist and passionate lover of poetry, he has devoted himself to these exalted creatures: to their observation, to singing their praises, and to ensuring their survival. Based on fifty years of detailed diaries, In Pursuit of Butterflies is the chronicle of this life.

Oates leads the reader through a lifetime of butterflying, across the mountain tops, the peat bogs, sea cliffs, meadows, heaths, the chalk downs and great forests of the British Isles. Full of humour, zeal, digression, expertise and anecdote, this book provides a profound encounter with one of our great butterfly lovers, and with a half-century of butterflies in Britain.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury UK
• Seitenzahl: 464
• Erscheinungstermin: 4. Juni 2015
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781472924513
• Artikelnr.: 42887949

Autorenporträt

Matthew Oates is a naturalist, writer and poet who has been obsessed by Britain's butterflies since he was at school. Intimately acquainted with all Britain's native species, he has conducted most of his research on the Pearl-bordered Fritillary, Mountain Ringlet and Duke of Burgundy; his experiences are summarised in his 2015 book, In Pursuit of Butterflies. But no butterfly has entranced him as much as the elusive Purple Emperor - a butterfly we now understand much better thanks to his detailed and tireless observations, captured in His Imperial Majesty (Bloomsbury, 2020).

Matthew retired from his post as National Specialist on Nature with the National Trust in 2018, and dedicated his retirement to ensuring the future of his favourite butterfly. He writes regularly for The Times Nature Notebook column and in magazines, and lives on the Gloucestershire-Wiltshire border.

Inhaltsangabe

Foreword Introduction 1 Starting out 2 Laudator temporis acti 3 Escape to
the woods 4 Rebellion 5 Into the green A digression, into names 6
Desperately seeking Rima 7 Walden 8 The long hot summer of 1976 9 The
legacy of 1976 Alice Holt Forest 10 Out of the seventies Winter 11 In and
out of war: the early 1980s Noar Hill 12 The return of the wanderer 13
Nineteen eighty-four and all that 14 A time of discovery Autumn 15
High-blown years: the Great Storm and afterwards 16 Paradise regained: the
great summer of 1989 Spring 17 Spring perfected 18 Moving on 19 High
adventures in the mid-1990s The New Forest 20 Summer of the Painted Lady 21
Leaving the nineties 22 Time out of time 23 The Emperor's return 24
Hairstreaks to the fore Some Cotswold places 25 Of Iris and Adonis 26 A
fall from grace Summer 27 A tale of two butterflies 28 Adventures with
caterpillars Savernake Forest 29 It rained. 30 Fifty years on Towards some
meaning Afterword: On Marlpost Road Butterflies of the year Bibliography
List of illustrations Acknowledgements Index of butterfly species General
index