Tells the success story of insects, discussing how the nearly one million known species have managed to survive and thrive in the varying climates and conditions of the earth, focusing on the cecropia moth as a basis for comparison.

Insect life cycles related to the four seasons

Text and illustrations describe the insect life inhabiting a meadow during each season of the year.

Dear Girls and Boys: You are the same children all through the year, but you do not look just the same in winter and in summer. Your January clothes are different from those you wear in July. Perhaps the color of your skin is changed, too. It will be a few shades darker during the season of brightest sunshine if you are outdoors as much as you should be. You may have more freckles in summer, and perhaps your hair will be bleached by the sun to a little different shade. People do not do exactly the same things in spring as they do in the fall. Farmers plant seeds in the ground in the spring. In the fall they harvest food for winter use. Storekeepers show different things in their shop windows in summer and winter. Fashions change in games as well as in work. You like to play some games in summer that would not be nearly so pleasant in winter. People may be happy at any time in the year, and yet there is some difference in the kinds of happiness. The joy you have in looking at the first pussy willow or bluet or violet or other spring flower is not quite the same as that you feel in the jolly fall, when the chattering squirrel gathers his acorns and the trees let their gay leaves go fluttering down. If people do not look and act and feel just the same at different times of the year, what about the rest of the world? Well, a bobolink is the same bird in the fall as he is in the spring, although he does not look and act the same. In the spring he wears a suit of white and black and yellow, but in the fall his feathers show mostly olive and brown colors. He does not act the same, either. In the spring he sings a joyous bubbling song of many lovely, lively notes. In the fall he repeats, over and over again, one call that sounds as if he were answering the rest of the bobolinks, who are all making the same sociable sound. You will understand that there is not room in one book to tell about more than a few of the wonderful things in the world, for a book is small and the world itself is very large. There are indeed more interesting things in the world than have ever been described in all the books that have been printed. So suppose that you read the chapters in this book and think about them in a special way. Think about them as samples of what the world has to show. Then perhaps you will wish to look at the things of the world for yourselves. We wish you happy hours—all through the year. Your friends, Edith M. Patch Harrison E. Howe

Tiny ruby-throated hummingbirds weighing less than a nickel fly from the upper Midwest to Costa Rica every fall, crossing the six-hundred-mile Gulf of Mexico without a single stop. One of the many creatures that commute on the Mississippi Flyway as part of an annual migration, they pass along Chicago’s lakefront and through midwestern backyards on a path used by their species for millennia. This magnificent migrational dance takes place every year in Chicagoland, yet it is often missed by the region’s two-legged residents. The Art of Migration uncovers these extraordinary patterns that play out over the seasons. Readers are introduced to over two hundred of the birds and insects that traverse regions from the edge of Lake Superior to Lake Michigan and to the rivers that flow into the Mississippi. As the only artist in residence at the Field Museum, Peggy Macnamara has a unique vantage point for studying these patterns and capturing their distinctive traits. Her magnificent watercolor illustrations capture flocks, movement, and species-specific details. The illustrations are accompanied by text from museum staff and include details such as natural histories, notable features for identification, behavior, and how species have adapted to environmental changes. The book follows a gentle seasonal sequence and includes chapters on studying migration, artist’s notes on illustrating wildlife, and tips on the best ways to watch for birds and insects in the Chicago area. A perfect balance of science and art, The Art of Migration will prompt us to marvel anew at the remarkable spectacle going on around us.

Discusses how to find, identify, collect, and keep insects and suggests a variety of related activities organized by the seasons

Buzz! Zip! Zoom! When the weather is warm, insects are everywhere. But what do they do in winter? Honeybees huddle in their hive. Monarch butterflies fly south. Woolly bear caterpillars hide under leaves and snow. This book shows what twelve different insects do to survive winter's chill.