Wonderland

Expert birders start each January by drawing up their yearlist -- the birds they are determined to see in the next 365 days. Brett Westwood and Stephen Moss want to help us do the same thing for nature. Every day of the year -- summer or winter -- there are wonderful things that we can all see and experience if only we knew what to look for. And now we do.

A chilly day in the dead of winter -- which bird would choose this time of year to raise its young?

The buzzing of bumblebees, the humming of hoverflies or the croaking of crickets -- which is the true sound of summer?

Distilling two lifetimes' knowledge, insight and enthusiasm, naturalists Brett Westwood and Stephen Moss take you through the year, day by day, sharing the delights that you can experience in Britain's skies, seas, rivers, fields, forests and back gardens. From winter encounters with the curious black redstart, which chooses to spend its winters on our freezing, rocky coasts, and the first appearance of the snowdrop's tiny green shoots poking up through stone-hard soil, the first sign that winter might be reaching an end; through spring with its rush of migrant birds and the emergence from her chrysalis of the fragile orange-tip butterfly; into the sounds and smells summer with its abundance of flowers and insects, and when at night you might encounter summer's 'earthly stars', the glow-worm, or that most bizarre and bewitching of moths, the ghost moth. WONDERLAND is a book for anyone who wants to experience the world and to observe how it changes throughout the year.