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| Vividly written and authoritative - Sophie Osborn's excellent book |
WHY are so few bees, butterflies and other pollinating insects to be seen fluttering in garden centres?
Sadly because many of them may have been coated with chemicals such as neonicotinoids which harm the nerves of pollinating insects and suppress their immune systems.
So claims author-conservationist Sophie Osborn in her recently-published Feather Trails.
She writes: "When I learnt of this, I thought with dismay about the pollinator gardens I'd delighted in creating at almost every home I'd lived, trying to leave each place better for wildlife than I'd found it.
"In trying to help the bees and butterflies that visited my salvias and penstemons, my bee balm an delphiniums, had I instead hastened the insects' demise?
The sub-title of Osborn's new book is A Journey of Discovery Among Endangered Birds, and much of the content is about the initiatives of her and others to ensure that species such as Peregrine, Hawaiian Crow and California Condor have a future in her native North America.
This all makes for fascinating reading, but so, too, does her commentary on the multiple threats posed the world not over - poisonous chemicals not the least of them.
The book also describes how her interest in birds has become the tapestry of her life, helping to give it meaning and richness.
As well as being rigorously-researched environmental investigation, Feathered Trails is also a personal journey and human story in which the author has had to overcome many obstacles - among them, heat exhaustion, poachers, rattlesnakes and chauvinism.
A most absorbing book, Feather Trails is published at £25 in hardback by Chelsea Green Feather Trails - Chelsea Green UK
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