Vanishing Act

The photos in this beautiful large-format (13½"×12") book are visual puzzles of a sort: you must try to find the animal hidden in its surroundings. Captions are at the back of the book, so the images are undisturbed by text and you can try to solve the puzzle on your own. Wolfe, a winner of the National Audubon Society's Rachel Carson Award and other prizes for nature photography, offers a closeup illustration of one of the best tricks in the natural world—animals' ability to blend into their environments in order to hide from predators. Even a lion's eyes match the tawny tall grasses of the African savanna through which he peers; a rock-colored pika (a relative of the rabbit) lies on a stone amid fallen autumn leaves; an Arctic hare seems no more than a shadow in Canadian snowdrifts; and a pink pygmy seahorse, just one-third of an inch long, mimics remarkably the web of coral in which it hides. In Rwanda, Panama, Papua New Guinea and a wide range of habitats, Wolfe's remarkably crisp images are a visual delight for nature lovers. (Nov.)