Dragonflight by Marianne Taylor

Dragonflight by Marianne Taylor

The delightful story of one woman's quest to see all of Britain's dragonflies and damselflies.

This book is an account of two years spent getting to know Britain's most dazzling and enigmatic insects - the dragonflies and damselflies.

The quest to find, photograph, watch and learn about dragons and damsels took the author on a tour of diverse and lovely wetlands up and down Britain, from the rugged wild peat bogs of north-west Scotland to the languid meanders of the Oxfordshire Thames.

The account describes close encounters with the dragons and damsels themselves, set against backdrops of rich and vital habitats teeming with a range of other wildlife. It is also packed with background detail on dragonfly and damselfly natural history, and wetland ecology in general.

The text is enlivened with line drawings and a section of colour photographs.

A charming new book by Marianne Taylor, that charts her two-year quest to see all 40 British dragons and damselsShe got within three – thwarted by last year’s wettest summer on record. Along the way she met badgers, foxes, hares, ospreys and butterflies galore and showed that this densely populated island still has plenty of magical wild places. The stars are the dragons and their bizarre lifestyle. -- John Ingham * The Daily Express *
A splendid search for all of Britain’s dragonflies and damselflies -- Simon Barnes * The Times *
The book is an account of of the author's travels in search of dragons and damsels...the reader is soon captivated by her thoughts and there were sections I could not put down. * Highland News Group *
Dragonflight is more than mere clinical descriptions of handsome insects, it is a series of warm verbal paintings of some of our most charismatic wildlife. * BBC Countryfile *
The combination of aquatic gargoyle nymphs and masterful aeronaut adults provides Taylor with a wealth of narrative and we are let through various watery landscapes, from lowland river and East Anglian Broad to moor mountain and coastal shingle in search of the adult flies … Dragonflight is more than mere clinical descriptions of handsome insects, it is a series of warm verbal paintings of some of our most charismatic wildlife. -- Richard Jones * BBC Wildlife *

Marianne Taylor is a writer, illustrator, photographer and editor. As a child she became passionately interested in first butterflies and then birds and, as the child of two librarians, one of whom later became a secondhand bookseller, she was as bookish as she was bird-obsessed. A couple of decades later, these factors helped her land her first job in publishing, as editorial assistant at the bird book publishers Christopher Helm. She worked in publishing for seven years, before taking the plunge as a freelancer in 2007. Since then she has written more than a dozen books for adults and children on a range of natural history subjects.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781408164860
ISBN 10	1408164868
Title	Dragonflight
Author	Marianne Taylor
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Year published	2013-06-06
Number of pages	256
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.