Fancy pigeons

Fancy pigeons PDF Author: James C. Lyell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description

Fancy pigeons

Fancy pigeons PDF Author: James C. Lyell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 412

Get Book Here

Book Description


Unnatural Selection

Unnatural Selection PDF Author: Katrina van Grouw
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400889642
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
A lavishly illustrated look at how evolution plays out in selective breeding Unnatural Selection is a stunningly illustrated book about selective breeding--the ongoing transformation of animals at the hand of man. More important, it's a book about selective breeding on a far, far grander scale—a scale that encompasses all life on Earth. We'd call it evolution. A unique fusion of art, science, and history, this book celebrates the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's monumental work The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, and is intended as a tribute to what Darwin might have achieved had he possessed that elusive missing piece to the evolutionary puzzle—the knowledge of how individual traits are passed from one generation to the next. With the benefit of a century and a half of hindsight, Katrina van Grouw explains evolution by building on the analogy that Darwin himself used—comparing the selective breeding process with natural selection in the wild, and, like Darwin, featuring a multitude of fascinating examples. This is more than just a book about pets and livestock, however. The revelation of Unnatural Selection is that identical traits can occur in all animals, wild and domesticated, and both are governed by the same evolutionary principles. As van Grouw shows, animals are plastic things, constantly changing. In wild animals the changes are usually too slow to see—species appear to stay the same. When it comes to domesticated animals, however, change happens fast, making them the perfect model of evolution in action. Suitable for the lay reader and student, as well as the more seasoned biologist, and featuring more than four hundred breathtaking illustrations of living animals, skeletons, and historical specimens, Unnatural Selection will be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in natural history and the history of evolutionary thinking.

A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching

A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching PDF Author: Rosemary Mosco
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1523515570
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Part field guide, part history, part ornithology primer, and altogether fun. Fact: Pigeons are amazing, and until recently, humans adored them. We’ve kept them as pets, held pigeon beauty contests, raced them, used them to carry messages over battlefields, harvested their poop to fertilize our crops—and cooked them in gourmet dishes. Now, with The Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching, readers can rediscover the wonder. Equal parts illustrated field guide and quirky history, it covers behavior: Why they coo; how they flock; how they preen, kiss, and mate (monogamously); and how they raise their young (on chunky pigeon milk). Anatomy and identification, from Birmingham Roller to the American Giant Runt to the Scandaroon. Birder issues, like what to do if you find a baby pigeon stranded in the park. And our lively shared story together, including all the things we’ve taught them—Ping-Pong, for example. “Rats with wings?” Think again. Pigeons coo, peck and nest all over the world, yet most of us treat them with indifference or disdain. So Rosemary Mosco, a bird-lover, science communicator, writer, and cartoonist (and co-author of The Atlas Obscura Explorer’s Guide for the World’s Most Adventurous Kid) is here to give the pigeon's image a makeover, and to help every town- and city-dweller get closer to nature by discovering the joys of birding through pigeon-watching.

Pigeons

Pigeons PDF Author: Andrew D. Blechman
Publisher: Univ. of Queensland Press
ISBN: 9780702236419
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
They have been worshipped as fertility goddesses and revered as symbols of peace. Domesticated since the dawn of humankind, they have been crucial to wartime communications for every major historical superpower from ancient Egypt to the United States and are credited with saving thousands of lives. One delivered the results of the first Olympics in 776 BC and another brought the news of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo more than 2500 years later. Charles Darwin relied heavily upon them to help formulate and support his theory of evolution. Yet today the pigeon is reviled as a rat with wings. How did we come to misunderstand one of humanity's most steadfast companions?In Pigeons, Andrew D. Blechman travels across the United States and Europe in a quest to chronicle the bird's transformation from beloved friend to feathered outlaw.

The Passenger Pigeon

The Passenger Pigeon PDF Author: Errol Fuller
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140085220X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
A haunting, beautifully illustrated memorial to this iconic extinct bird At the start of the nineteenth century, Passenger Pigeons were perhaps the most abundant birds on the planet, numbering literally in the billions. The flocks were so large and so dense that they blackened the skies, even blotting out the sun for days at a stretch. Yet by the end of the century, the most common bird in North America had vanished from the wild. In 1914, the last known representative of her species, Martha, died in a cage at the Cincinnati Zoo. This stunningly illustrated book tells the astonishing story of North America's Passenger Pigeon, a bird species that—like the Tyrannosaur, the Mammoth, and the Dodo—has become one of the great icons of extinction. Errol Fuller describes how these fast, agile, and handsomely plumaged birds were immortalized by the ornithologist and painter John James Audubon, and captured the imagination of writers such as James Fenimore Cooper, Henry David Thoreau, and Mark Twain. He shows how widespread deforestation, the demand for cheap and plentiful pigeon meat, and the indiscriminate killing of Passenger Pigeons for sport led to their catastrophic decline. Fuller provides an evocative memorial to a bird species that was once so important to the ecology of North America, and reminds us of just how fragile the natural world can be. Published in the centennial year of Martha’s death, The Passenger Pigeon features rare archival images as well as haunting photos of live birds.

Our Fancy Pigeons

Our Fancy Pigeons PDF Author: George Ure
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781539813569
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
This is special re-print edition of the 1st edition of George Ure's legendary book "Our Fancy Pigeons." Published in 1890, this is considered one of the most important works of the 19th Century on Domestic Pigeons and covers numerous breeds which were known in England at the time. Original copies of this book are extremely rare and often sell for hundreds of dollars. This book features all the basics on raising pigeons, as well as insights into such breeds as the Jacobin, Fantails, Croppers, Pouters, Dragoons, Carriers, Nuns, Flying Tumblers and others. Note: This edition is a perfect facsimile of the original edition and is not set in a modern typeface. As a result, some type characters and images might suffer from slight imperfections or minor shadows in the page background.

The New York Pigeon

The New York Pigeon PDF Author: Andrew Garn
Publisher: powerHouse Books
ISBN: 9781576878699
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The New York Pigeon is a photography book that reveals the unexpected beauty of the omnipresent pigeon as if Vogue magazine devoted its pages to birds, rather than fashion models. In spite of pigeons' ubiquity in New York and other cities, we never really see them closely and know very little about their function in the urban ecosystem. This book brings to light the intriguing history, behavior and splendor of a bird that we frequently overlook. The New York Pigeon reveals the unexpected beauty of our omnipresent pigeon. Employing exquisite portraiture that one might find in a fashion magazine, the book features this underappreciated urban bird in a fresh, glamorous light. Finally, the much maligned pigeon gets its 15 minutes. "stool pigeon..." "rats with wings..." Why? What did pigeons ever do to deserve such disrespect? (They mind their own business, they saved lives in World War I and II, and they're beautiful to boot.) Andrew Garn seeks to right this egregious wrong- through his keen eye, the pigeon is photographed in all its unexpected glory-elevated to its rightful place as a wondrous being of beauty and grace, soaring though time and space. You will never look at pigeons the same way again. In spite of pigeons' ubiquity in New York and other cities, we never really see them closely and know very little about their function in the urban ecosystem. For many New Yorkers, pigeons are the "gateway drug" to nature. The result of eight years of passionate inquiry,The New York Pigeon is a photographic study of the birds' power and allure. The dramatic, hyper-real individual studio portraits capture their personalities, expressiveness, glorious feather iridescence, and deeply hued eyes. High-speed strobe photography illustrates the pigeons' graceful flight and dramatic wing movements. While The New York Pigeon is primarily aphotography book, it also tells part of the 5,000-year story of the feral pigeon and their long association with humans. How did Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner teach pigeons to do complicated tasks, from tracking missile targets to recognizing individual human faces? How do pigeons find their way back home from hundreds of miles away? The New York Pigeon lovingly describes and illuminates the wonder of nature alive in our midst. With this book, the beautiful, savvy, graceful, kind pigeon will be invisible no more.

Superdove

Superdove PDF Author: Courtney Humphries
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061259160
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Why do we see pigeons as lowly urban pests and how did they become such common city dwellers? Courtney Humphries traces the natural history of the pigeon, recounting how these shy birds that once made their homes on the sparse cliffs of sea coasts came to dominate our urban public spaces. While detailing this evolution, Humphries introduces us to synanthropy: The concept that animals can become dependent on humans without ceasing to be wild; they can adapt to the cityscape as if it were a field or a forest. Superdove simultaneously explores the pigeon's cultural transformation, from its life in the dovecotes of ancient Egypt to its service in the trenches of World War I, to its feats within the pigeon-racing societies of today. While the dove is traditionally recognized as a symbol of peace, the pigeon has long inspired a different sort of fetishistic devotion from breeders, eaters, and artists—and from those who recognized and exploited the pigeon's astounding abilities. Because of their fecundity, pigeons were symbols of fertility associated with Aphrodite, while their keen ability to find their way home made them ideal messengers and even pilots. Their usefulness largely forgotten, today's pigeons have become as ubiquitous and reviled as rats. But Superdove reveals something more surprising: By using pigeons for our own purposes, we humans have changed their evolution. And in doing so, we have helped make pigeons the ideal city dwellers they are today. In the tradition of Rats, the book that made its namesake rodents famous, Superdove is the fascinating story of the pigeon's journey from the wild to the city—the home they'll never leave.

American Pigeon Journal

American Pigeon Journal PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Pigeons
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Book Description


Fancy Pigeons

Fancy Pigeons PDF Author: James C. Lyell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Pigeons
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description