Summer. Secrets of Plant and Animal Survival in the Season of Abundance

How do cicadas survive at temperatures up to +46 °C? Do hummingbirds, setting out across the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, know that they will have to fly without landing for about 17 hours? Why do the branches of some trees stop elongating by mid-June, even though there are still almost three months of summer ahead, while vines and shoots on stumps continue to grow intensively? The famous American naturalist Bernd Heinrich describes the complex mechanisms of interactions between animals and plants with their environment and various strategies for their behavior during the summer period. The author's focus is on frogs, woodpeckers and orioles, wasps, blue butterflies and moths, wood-boring beetles, dipterous insects, ants and other representatives of the animal kingdom, as well as plants, mosses, and lichens. Beautifully illustrated with the author's drawings and filled with his inexhaustible love for nature, the book highlights the behavior of animals and plants in summer conditions, which in some aspects are no less complex than winter conditions.