A COUNTRY NATURALIST'S YEAR. By Colin Laurie McKelvie and Rodger McPhail.

1993 1st edition. 4to (296 x 214mm). Pp144. Over 80 watercolour paintings by Rodger McPhail. Brown boards, spine titled in gilt.

"In this account of a country naturalist's experiences, I have ranged widely through notes and memories of the creatures and the places that I have encountered. In this I have not confined myself to the landscape and wildlife of Dumfriesshire, where I live, nor to Ireland, where I was born and grew up, nor to the Highlands of Scotland nor the chalk downlands of Wessex where I have lived and worked, and to which I often return. Instead I have included all these, and more besides..." Chapters include: The water-peggie; The leaper; A changeling world; The fringe of the moor; The hunter of the cliffs; Creatures of a day; The ring-tail and the ashen hawk; The falcon's crag; The goat of the air; Birds of the hill, birds of the heath; along the woodland edge; Encounters by the hidden loch; the fish hawk that came back; The mushroom mystery; Prowlers in the half-light; Deer for tomorrow; Ice Age legacies; The watcher and the roe; A river through the year; A year of wings.