The Beauty of Birds

The Beauty of Birds PDF Author: Jeremy Mynott
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400843154
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 43

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Book Description
Spring returns and with it the birds. But it also brings throngs of birders who emerge, binoculars in hand, to catch a glimpse of a rare or previously unseen species or to simply lay eyes on a particularly fine specimen of a familiar type. In a delightful meditation that unexpectedly ranges from the Volga Delta to Central Park and from Charles Dickens's Hard Times to a 1940s London burlesque show, Jeremy Mynott ponders what makes birds so beautiful and alluring to so many people. Princeton Shorts are brief selections taken from influential Princeton University Press books and produced exclusively in ebook format. Providing unmatched insight into important contemporary issues or timeless passages from classic works of the past, Princeton Shorts enable you to be an instant expert in a world where information is everywhere but quality is at a premium.

The Beauty of Birds

The Beauty of Birds PDF Author: Jeremy Mynott
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400843154
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 43

Get Book Here

Book Description
Spring returns and with it the birds. But it also brings throngs of birders who emerge, binoculars in hand, to catch a glimpse of a rare or previously unseen species or to simply lay eyes on a particularly fine specimen of a familiar type. In a delightful meditation that unexpectedly ranges from the Volga Delta to Central Park and from Charles Dickens's Hard Times to a 1940s London burlesque show, Jeremy Mynott ponders what makes birds so beautiful and alluring to so many people. Princeton Shorts are brief selections taken from influential Princeton University Press books and produced exclusively in ebook format. Providing unmatched insight into important contemporary issues or timeless passages from classic works of the past, Princeton Shorts enable you to be an instant expert in a world where information is everywhere but quality is at a premium.

The Extraordinary Beauty of Birds

The Extraordinary Beauty of Birds PDF Author: Mark Peck
Publisher: Prestel Publishing
ISBN: 9783791382036
Category : Birds
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In this magnificent display of ornithological beauty, readers are given the chance to marvel at the textures and colors of birds in stunning detail--and are rewarded with a new appreciation of art in nature. Deborah Samuel's photographs are meant to inspire and teach. In this book she turns her lens toward the bird, and her images are as surprising as they are exquisite. From nest to egg to feather, these images are an exercise in seeing and a showcase of what photography can reveal: the impossibly soft feathers of ospreys; the iridescence of a bird-of-paradise; the curved, needle-like beak of a common scimitarbill; and the psychedelic hues of the aptly named resplendent quetzal. Samuel also photographs the nests and eggs of birds, showing us examples of incredible artistry and simple, natural perfection. Accompanying these images are detailed scientific descriptions of Samuel's subjects, written by Mark Peck, an ornithological expert at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. An index detailing each species--its common and scientific names, size, habitats, and breeding practices--makes this more than a photography book, while the extraordinary images transform it into a sourcebook of colors, shapes, and designs.

Birds

Birds PDF Author: Tim Flach
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1647007224
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
Birds of the world are portrayed in all their colorful glory by Tim Flach, the world’s leading animal photographer Radiating grace, intelligence, and humor, and always in motion, birds tantalize the human imagination. Working for years in his studio and the field, Tim Flach has portrayed nature’s most exquisite creatures alertly at rest or dramatically in flight, capturing intricate feather patterns and subtle coloration invisible to the naked eye. From familiar friends to marvelous rarities, Flach’s birds convey the beauty and wonder of the natural world. Here are all manner of songbirds, parrots, and birds of paradise; birds of prey, water birds, and theatrical domestic breeds. The brilliant ornithologist Richard O. Prum is our guide to this magical kingdom.

The Art of Birds

The Art of Birds PDF Author: Jim Miller
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780813066769
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Captivating views of birdlife In photographs that surprise with their eye-catching composition and amaze with their detail, The Art of Birds captures the beauty of birds as most people never see them. Jim Miller focuses his camera lens on distinctive and spectacular species found in the wetlands and along the shorelines of Florida and the southeast, portraying their behaviors in their natural habitats. Ranging from striking portraits to high speed stop-action shots, the images showcase the splendor of large birds such as the anhinga, great blue heron, sandhill crane, snowy egret, osprey, and flamingo. They also depict the charm of smaller species including the ruddy turnstone, boat-tailed grackle, and the least bittern. Many of the photographs display brilliant plumage up close. Others show aspects of bird life related to courting, feeding, and flying. Accompanying the images are descriptions of the species by early naturalists and ornithologists, from William Bartram to John James Audubon to Arthur Cleveland Bent. The excerpts from their narratives and journals reveal bird populations and environments that we can only imagine today, providing an homage to Old Florida through the perspectives of some of its most astute and eloquent chroniclers. Miller's captivating photography encourages viewers to marvel at the elegant combination of form and function in bird species, perfected by processes of adaptation and selection over millions of years. The Art of Birds celebrates the creativity of nature, the joy of observation, and the richness of birdlife.

Aaaaw to Zzzzzd: The Words of Birds

Aaaaw to Zzzzzd: The Words of Birds PDF Author: John Bevis
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262288958
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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Book Description
The distinctive and amazing songs and calls of birds: a meditation and a lexicon. “A miraculous little book: a compressed encyclopedia of our fascination with avifauna.” —The Nation “A charming, funny, and eccentric book.” —Times Literary Supplement “An elegant tribute to the beauty of its subject.” —Los Angeles Times Birds sing and call, sometimes in complex and beautiful arrangements of notes, sometimes in one-line repetitions that resemble a ringtone more than a symphony. Listening, we are stirred, transported, and even envious of birds' ability to produce what Shelley called “profuse strains of unpremeditated art.” And for hundreds of years, we have tried to write down what we hear when birds sing. Poets have put birdsong in verse (Thomas Nashe: “Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo”) and ornithologists have transcribed bird sounds more methodically. Drawing on this history of bird writing, in Aaaaw to Zzzzzd John Bevis offers a lexicon of the words of birds. For tourists in Birdland, there could be no more charming phrasebook. Consulting it, we find seven distinct variations of “hoo” attributed to seven different species of owls, from a simple hoo to the more ambitious hoo hoo hoo-hoo, ho hoo hoo-hoo; the understated cheet of the tree swallow; the resonant kreeaaaaaaaaaaar of the Swainson's hawk; the modest peep peep peep of the meadow pipit. We learn that some people hear the Baltimore oriole saying “here, here, come right here, dear” and the yellowhammer saying “a little bit of bread and no cheese.” Bevis, a poet, frames his lexicons—one for North America and one for Britain and northern Europe—with an evocative appreciation of birds, birdsong, and human attempts to capture the words of birds in music and poetry. He also offers an engaging account of other methods of documenting birdsong—field recording, graphic notation, and mechanical devices including duck calls and the serinette, an instrument used to teach song tunes to songbirds. The singing of birds is nature at its most sublime, and words are our medium for expressing this sublimity. Aaaaw to Zzzzzd belongs in the bird lover's backpack and on the word lover's bedside table, an unexpected and sui generis pleasure.

The Iridescence of Birds

The Iridescence of Birds PDF Author: Patricia MacLachlan
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
ISBN: 1466876646
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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Book Description
If you were a boy named Henri Matisse who lived in a dreary town in northern France, what would your life be like? Would it be full of color and art? Full of lines and dancing figures? Find out in this beautiful, unusual picture book about one of the world's most famous and influential artists by acclaimed author and Newbery Medal-winning Patricia MacLachlan and innovative illustrator Hadley Hooper. A Neal Porter Book

My Little Golden Book About Bugs

My Little Golden Book About Bugs PDF Author: Bonnie Bader
Publisher: Golden Books
ISBN: 0593123891
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 15

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Book Description
This nonfiction Little Golden Book is filled with amazing facts about bugs--perfect for preschoolers! Some creep and crawl, some fly and flutter--they're bugs! And kids are fascinated by them. This simple yet informative Little Golden Book introduces a variety of bugs to preschoolers. They'll love the colorful illustrations and the cool facts about ants, spiders, butterflies, beetles, stick bugs, honey bees, praying mantises, and many more. This is a book that young bug enthusiasts will want to look at again and again!

My Beautiful Birds

My Beautiful Birds PDF Author: Suzanne Del Rizzo
Publisher: Pajama Press Inc.
ISBN: 1772780103
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 35

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Book Description
Behind Sami, the Syrian skyline is full of smoke. The boy follows his family and all his neighbours in a long line, as they trudge through the sands and hills to escape the bombs that have destroyed their homes. But all Sami can think of is his pet pigeons - will they escape too? When they reach a refugee camp and are safe at last, everyone settles into the tent city. But though the children start to play and go to school again, Sami can't join in. When he is given paper and paint, all he can do is smear his painting with black. He can't forget his birds and what his family has left behind. One day a canary, a dove, and a rose finch fly into the camp. They flutter around Sami and settle on his outstretched arms. For Sami it is one step in a long healing process at last. A gentle yet moving story of refugees of the Syrian civil war, My Beautiful Birds illuminates the ongoing crisis as it affects its children. It shows the reality of the refugee camps, where people attempt to pick up their lives and carry on. And it reveals the hope of generations of people as they struggle to redefine home.

The Evolution of Beauty

The Evolution of Beauty PDF Author: Richard O. Prum
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385537220
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
A FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, SMITHSONIAN, AND WALL STREET JOURNAL A major reimagining of how evolutionary forces work, revealing how mating preferences—what Darwin termed "the taste for the beautiful"—create the extraordinary range of ornament in the animal world. In the great halls of science, dogma holds that Darwin's theory of natural selection explains every branch on the tree of life: which species thrive, which wither away to extinction, and what features each evolves. But can adaptation by natural selection really account for everything we see in nature? Yale University ornithologist Richard Prum—reviving Darwin's own views—thinks not. Deep in tropical jungles around the world are birds with a dizzying array of appearances and mating displays: Club-winged Manakins who sing with their wings, Great Argus Pheasants who dazzle prospective mates with a four-foot-wide cone of feathers covered in golden 3D spheres, Red-capped Manakins who moonwalk. In thirty years of fieldwork, Prum has seen numerous display traits that seem disconnected from, if not outright contrary to, selection for individual survival. To explain this, he dusts off Darwin's long-neglected theory of sexual selection in which the act of choosing a mate for purely aesthetic reasons—for the mere pleasure of it—is an independent engine of evolutionary change. Mate choice can drive ornamental traits from the constraints of adaptive evolution, allowing them to grow ever more elaborate. It also sets the stakes for sexual conflict, in which the sexual autonomy of the female evolves in response to male sexual control. Most crucially, this framework provides important insights into the evolution of human sexuality, particularly the ways in which female preferences have changed male bodies, and even maleness itself, through evolutionary time. The Evolution of Beauty presents a unique scientific vision for how nature's splendor contributes to a more complete understanding of evolution and of ourselves.

The Bedside Book of Birds

The Bedside Book of Birds PDF Author: Graeme Gibson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781526633675
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY MARGARET ATWOOD Featured in the vast majority of mythologies and religions, birds are generally associated with creativity and the human spirit. From the Christian dove to Quetzalcoatl (the Aztec plumed serpent), and from Raven Man to Plato's description of the soul growing wings and feathers, birds have represented the soul in contrast to the body, the spiritual as opposed to the earthly. The Bedside Book of Birds is an unexpected and fascinating treasure trove of paintings, drawings, essays and scientific observations: it marvellously conveys the hope, the longing and the enchantment that birds have evoked in humans in all cultures and all times. Beautifully produced, the book contains more than one hundred illustrations, ranging from early cave paintings through works by Audubon, Morris and Gould, to Inuit and other works created in the twentieth century. There are writings by naturalists like W.H. Hudson, Laurens van der Post, Peter Matthiessen and Barry Lopez, and by classical authors such as Shakespeare, Coleridge, Melville and Poe. There is also a rich seam of contemporary work by Jorge Luis Borges, Ted Hughes, Italo Calvino, Bruce Chatwin and Haruki Murakami, among many others. The Bedside Book of Birds is a book to explore, to savour, and to learn from - a book for the winged soul in all of us.