Adrian Craig

The poems in this title evoke encounters with a number of living creatures, primarily in southern Africa. They range from aardvark to zebra, and include dragonflies, jellyfish, kudu, seahorses and warthogs. The text invites the reader to consider animals not so much as beasts or feasts, pets or threats, but as our chromosome cousins. The title embodies recent discoveries in the fields of evolutionary biology, palaeontology and astronomy. These discoveries, when taken together, reveal how each animal is part of a lifeline that stretches back billions of years and is inseparable from the genesis of the cosmos as a whole.

A comprehensive illustrated guide to the Old World family of birds in the Helm Identification series. Starlings range from familiar species such as Common Starling and Common Myna, which are closely associated with people and have been introduced to many parts of the world, to little-known forest birds with a very restricted distribution. The family is centred on tropical Asia and tropical Africa, where two separate evolutionary radiations have occurred. This is the first monograph on the starling family, and summarises the current knowledge of all speices, with a comprehensive bibliography. Information from the avicultural literature is included since for some species nesting and other behaviour have never been observed in the field. Many starlings are highly social, some even nest in colonies, and cooperative breeding ('helpers at the nest') occurs in a number of African species highlights areas where information is lacking, particularly for those starlings whose existence is threatened by habitat destruction. The Indo-Malayan and Afro-tropical varieties are covered, along with the New World immigrants, and the text together with drawings, maps and photographs show aspects of bird behaviour, distribution and natural history.