Building on the paradigm of a regional general natural history field guide that Kaufman originally originally established in the Kaufman Field Guide to Nature of New England, this second volume in the series takes up the flora and fauna of – as well as the geology, climate, and night sky as seen from – Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio.
For most of us, the creatures we encounter in the field are objects of interest, study, or even affection, but when it comes to the moths in our closet, the silverfish under the sink, or the roaches in our cupboard, our feelings generally switch to irritation, disgust, and violence.
How much thought do you give to the importance of seeds? Unless you’re a botanist or a horticulturist, you likely give as much thought as I do – not much. Oh – like me – you might give quite a lot of thought to the plants that grow from seeds, but not the seeds themselves. However after reading just the first chapter of Thor Hanson’s “The Triumph of Seeds…”
Despite years with Leupold developing sports optics for bird watching and other terrestrial pursuits, prior to my taking over the product portfolio of binoculars and spotting scopes for Celestron, it never occurred to me that anyone would use binoculars in astronomy. Yet there they were; massive Porro prism models with enormous objective lenses and magnification levels far beyond what could be steadily held merely by hand.