The next best thing to exploring nature is to read about it. So turn off the TV, pour yourself a drink and settle down with one of these transportative tomes.

These titles, perfect to read when you need a little of the countryside brought into your home.

THE WREN: A BIOGRAPHY BY STEPHEN MOSS

(SQUARE PEG, £12.99)

This beautifully illustrated book focuses on Britain's most common bird - there are 8.5 million breeding pairs of wrens up and down the country, which can be found from the smallest city garden to the remotest off-shore island. It covers a year-in-the-life of this tiny, secretive bird and looks at how it has become a mainstay of literature, culture and popular history. If you like this one, you can also read Moss's best-selling biography on the robin, which was published to critical acclaim last year.

A HONEYBEE HEART HAS FIVE OPENINGS BY HELEN JUKES

(SCRIBNER, £14.99)

This is one for anyone who has dreamt of becoming a bee keeper and escaping the urban rat race. It follows the ups and downs of an Oxford-based novice beekeeper's year of keeping honeybees. Helen Jukes' memoir is a fascinating exploration of the honeybee and the hive, the practices of honey-gathering and the history of our observation of bees. It is also a beautifully wrought meditation on responsibility, care, friendship and trust.

HOW TO SEE NATURE BY PAUL EVANS

(BATSFORD LTD, £16.99)

Paul Evans is the Guardian's country diary writer and this bumper book features the best of his writing. It includes a range of essays covering an extensive range of topics related to the natural world in Britain, including pieces on the wildlife of wasteland, the wild creatures you can find by moonlight and the life of a meadow. It's the perfect collection to dip into and out of at leisure and is perfect for anyone with a natural history bent.

RED RAG TO A BULL: RURAL LIFE IN AN URBAN AGE BY JAMIE BLACKETT

(QUILLER PUBLISHING, £20)

A farmer by day and a writer by night, Jamie Blackett's second book is part childhood memoir and part biopic of rural life. In this amusing and moving tale he looks at what happens when he arrives home from the Army after 20 years to take over a small family estate on the Solway Firth in Dumfries and Galloway. In this rapidly changing countryside he grapples with farming, conservation and estate management, founding a pack of foxhounds and a herd of pedigree beef cattle along the way.

WILDING BY ISABELLA TREE

(PICADOR, £20)

Open the beautiful cover of this book and you will discover a fascinating tale - part memoir, part ecological success story - about a pioneering rewilding project in West Sussex that uses free-roaming grazing animals to create new habitats for wildlife. Together with her husband Charlie Burrell, the author introduced cattle, ponies, pigs and deer on their 3,500 acre farm and then waited to see what nature would do. Ten years later and the results speak for themselves: their previously degraded agricultural land is now heaving with an extraordinary increase in wildlife numbers and diversity, showing that Mother Nature, when left to her own devices, can achieve unbelievable things.

MAN OF THE TREES: RICHARD ST. BARBE BAKER, THE FIRST GLOBAL CONSERVATIONIST BY PAUL HANLEY

(UNIVERSITY OF REGINA PRESS, £26.99)

Englishman and Edwardian eccentric Richard St. Barbe Baker was an inspirational visionary and pioneering environmentalist who contributed greatly to worldwide reforestation efforts. This fascinating biography, with a forward by HRH Prince Charles and an introduction by Jane Goodall, not only examines his lasting legacy but looks at the man's extraordinary life as a tree obsessive, failed entrepreneur and inventor, proud soldier, peace activist, brilliant writer and entertaining raconteur.