A Wild Romance

 
A Wild Romance - 50 years studying and photographing wildlife around the world
 
Clliford & Dawn Frith
 
Following a brief introduction to each author’s life prior to their meeting, A Wild Romance opens with the unusual circumstances of their meeting as biologists on a remote coral atoll. They then spent a year in England writing their Aldabra Atoll research followed by four years of biological work on Phuket Island, Thailand, before intensively studying and photographing wildlife in tropical Australia, New Guinea, and around the world. They spent half a century together as widely-travelled and -published freelance biologists and photographers deeply appreciative of and committed to nature as kindred spirits. Such a life as a couple of biologists involved exciting, unusual, colourful, humorous, and dangerous
experiences.
 
Several of their tales include the making of exciting novel biological discoveries, including some remarkable animal behaviour. Others involve near-death misadventure; active volcanos; a poisonous snake bite; living with hornbills, cobras, a monkey, and an otter in the home; dodging holdups and tribal warfare; close encounters with African Lions, man-eating crocodiles, and other animals; visiting Qatar at the invitation of a Sheik; and using an inflatable life-size male sex doll as a stand-in for Sir David Attenborough. More than 200 photographs illustrate their experiences.
 
Locations visited and detailed herein involve Australia (including Tasmania, Macquarie, and Lord Howe Islands), Papua New Guinea, the UK, Europe to Turkey, Africa, Middle East, Madagascar, Réunion, Mauritius, Seychelles, Afghanistan, India, Nepal, China, Japan, South East Asia, Indonesian Java and Bali, Philippines, Borneo, New Zealand, Australasian Subantarctic Islands, South Pacific Islands (Solomons, Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Tahiti, Hawaii), Easter Island, Galapagos Islands, North America (including Alaska, Kodiak Island, Pribilof Islands), Canada, South America (Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia), Falkland Islands, and Antarctica.
 
 
REVIEWS:
 
"Lucky readers! You are about to read one remarkable book, by two remarkable people, who are famous for at least three reasons: their biological discoveries, their photography, and their relationship. ... What has been their secret?
Read this book, and figure it out for yourself! And while you are figuring it out, enjoy their great photographs, and learn from their remarkable discoveries."
 
Prof. Jared Diamond, USA
 
"In writing about their contributions to environment and conservation, it is difficult to separate Cliff and Dawn. Both are exemplary researchers and scholars and have worked so much together that the wider society knows them as the Friths!
Cliff and Dawn Frith are indeed an institution in the sphere of ornithology and in their own northern Queensland community. They have accomplished much of great value to Australia through their own extraordinary initiatives."
 
Prof. Peter Valentine, Australia
 
"Anyone writing about birds of paradise these days will, knowingly or unknowingly, owe a debt to Clifford Frith. We certainly do. Together with Bruce Beehler, Frith has written the most modern and authoritative ornithological text about the family, The Birds of Paradise (1998). With his wife Dawn he has also made an encyclopaedic survey of the birds' cultural impact in Birds of Paradise: Nature, Art and History (2010)."
 
Sir David F. Attenborough and Errol Fuller, UK
 
 
Size: 19cm x 25cm
 
400 page hardcover with dust jacket,  endpaper maps, and 212 colour photographs.
 
ISBN: 9780645705287