Curious Naturalists

Dr. Niko Tinbergen

• Publisher: Muriwai Books
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781787209015
• Subtopic: Zoology

Dr. Niko Tinbergen was well known as a naturalist and a student of animal behaviour in England, on the Continent and in the United States. Ever since he was a young student in Holland he had been curious about nature, and in this book he sets out some of the facts that 25 years of curiosity gave him.
As a biologist, anything living was his province—the bee-killing wasps and the digger wasps of the Dutch sand dunes; the Snow Bruntings and Phalaropes of Greenland; Hobbies and other hawks; moths and butterflies in various parts of England and Holland; Black-headed Gulls of the Ravenglass nature reserve, Cumberland, the Kittiwakes and Eider Ducks of the Farne Islands off the coast of Northumberland.
Readers cannot fail to be struck—and possibly sometimes amused—by the patience and ingenuity shown in the field studies undertaken by Dr. Tinbergen and his fellow naturalists—and which are now passed on for the benefit and interest of his readers. The studies were always undertaken seriously, but this did not prevent Dr. Tinbergen from writing about them in the liveliest way; he realised that quite often he and his friends must have seemed to onlookers to be very curious naturalists indeed.

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• CHAPTER ONE-THE BEE-HUNTERS OF HULSHORST
• CHAPTER TWO-ARCTIC INTERLUDE
• CHAPTER THREE-SNOW BUNTINGS AND PHALAROPES
• CHAPTER FOUR-BACK TO THE BEE-HUNTERS
• CHAPTER FIVE-SWIFTER THAN SWIFTS
• CHAPTER SIX-THE SAND WASPS
• CHAPTER SEVEN-STUDIES OF CAMOUFLAGE
• CHAPTER EIGHT-DEFENCE BY COLOUR
• CHAPTER NINE-BARK WITH WINGS
• CHAPTER TEN-CAMBERWELL BEAUTIES
• CHAPTER ELEVEN-CLIFF DWELLERS
• CHAPTER TWELVE-BLACK-HEADED GULLS, 1
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN-BLACK-HEADED GULLS, 2
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN-EIDER INVASION
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN-INSECTS AND FLOWERS
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN-CURIOUS NATURALISTS
• REFERENCES
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER