Coffee Table Book of: Insects (Paperback)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Insects is a large-format coffee table book about insects, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two. Most show a single insect in its own setting; a few step back to a swarm or a gathering.

It opens with beetles: a metallic-green tiger beetle on bare sand, a Hercules beetle with a long black horn on a mossy log in a rainforest and a giraffe weevil with its long black neck raised.

Then dragonflies: a green and sky-blue emperor dragonfly on a reed above a lily pond, another face to face, all huge blue-green eyes, a scarlet dragonfly with its abdomen pointing straight up, and a golden-ringed dragonfly hanging from a heather stem.

Then bees, wasps and ants: a honeycomb in the hollow of an old tree, a round nest of wasp paper and leafcutter ants carrying green leaf fragments. Then on the flower: a bumblebee at a pink foxglove, a hummingbird hawk-moth hovering with its long tongue uncoiled and a honeybee on lavender.

Then moths: a pale green luna moth with long curving tails, a rust-red atlas moth and a yellow comet moth trailing very long tails. Then caterpillars and cocoons: a puss moth caterpillar rearing to show its red-ringed face, white silk cocoons among mulberry leaves and processionary caterpillars travelling nose to tail.

Then mantises and katydids: a white and pale pink orchid mantis with petal-shaped legs and a great green bush-cricket with antennae longer than its body.

Then masters of disguise: a leaf insect shaped and veined like a leaf, a brown stick insect along its twig and a red underwing showing only the crimson edge of its hindwing. Then fresh water: a diving beetle among pond weed with a silver bubble of air and a mayfly with its clear wings held upright.

Toward the end, swarms and gatherings: a glowing cloud of fireflies over a dark meadow, a dark cloud of locusts over a dry plain, red ladybirds packed close on a frosted stem, a tall slab-shaped termite mound and a swarm of honeybees hanging from a branch.

Short notes run through the book. They are about insects rather than about the pictures: how much longer a male giraffe weevil’s neck can be than a female’s, how a firefly makes a cold light that gives off almost no heat, how long the longest stick insects grow, and which insects moult once more after their wings can fly.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a paperback.