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Author: Karen Harden McCracken
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 9781585441648
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 340
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Book Description
In any other context, saying that someone was "for the birds" would hardly be polite. But applied to Connie Hagar, it would be high praise. The diminutive birdwatcher nicknamed Connie was reared as Martha Conger Neblett in early twentieth-century Texas, where she led a genteel life of tea parties and music lessons. But at middle age she became fascinated with birds and resolved to learn everything she could about them. In 1935, she and her husband, Jack, moved to Rockport, on the Coastal Bend of Texas, to be at the center of one of the most abundant areas of bird life in the country. Her diligence in observation soon had her setting elite East Coast ornithologists on their ears, as she sighted more and more species the experts claimed she could not possibly have seen. (Repeatedly she proved them wrong.) She ultimately earned the respect and love of birders from the shores of New Jersey to the islands of the Pacific. Life Magazine pictured her in a tribute to the country's premier amateur naturalists, and she received many awards from nature and birding societies. Connie Hagar's life history is more than just a bird book. Hers is a story of dedication to nature and the role she could play in promoting it to others, despite recurring threats of blindness and other health problems. The hundreds of species of birds that visited Rockport each year brought thousands of other birders, and Connie patiently hosted and assisted both the greenest beginners and the most magisterial experts. It was she, more than any other person, who made coastal Texas--and especially Rockport--a mecca for all serious birders. Karen Harden McCracken and Connie Hagar's Boswellian-Johnsonian relationship in the 1960s, Connie's own "Nature Calendars" containing thirty-five years of observations, and interviews with those who knew the "birdwoman of Rockport" provide the basis for this simple but exhilarating narrative.
Author: Karen Harden McCracken
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 9781585441648
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 340
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Book Description
In any other context, saying that someone was "for the birds" would hardly be polite. But applied to Connie Hagar, it would be high praise. The diminutive birdwatcher nicknamed Connie was reared as Martha Conger Neblett in early twentieth-century Texas, where she led a genteel life of tea parties and music lessons. But at middle age she became fascinated with birds and resolved to learn everything she could about them. In 1935, she and her husband, Jack, moved to Rockport, on the Coastal Bend of Texas, to be at the center of one of the most abundant areas of bird life in the country. Her diligence in observation soon had her setting elite East Coast ornithologists on their ears, as she sighted more and more species the experts claimed she could not possibly have seen. (Repeatedly she proved them wrong.) She ultimately earned the respect and love of birders from the shores of New Jersey to the islands of the Pacific. Life Magazine pictured her in a tribute to the country's premier amateur naturalists, and she received many awards from nature and birding societies. Connie Hagar's life history is more than just a bird book. Hers is a story of dedication to nature and the role she could play in promoting it to others, despite recurring threats of blindness and other health problems. The hundreds of species of birds that visited Rockport each year brought thousands of other birders, and Connie patiently hosted and assisted both the greenest beginners and the most magisterial experts. It was she, more than any other person, who made coastal Texas--and especially Rockport--a mecca for all serious birders. Karen Harden McCracken and Connie Hagar's Boswellian-Johnsonian relationship in the 1960s, Connie's own "Nature Calendars" containing thirty-five years of observations, and interviews with those who knew the "birdwoman of Rockport" provide the basis for this simple but exhilarating narrative.
Author: Karen Harden McCracken
Publisher: Texas A & M University Press
ISBN: 9780890964064
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 312
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Book Description
Author: John P. O'Neill
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292760531
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 128
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Book Description
Presents color reproductions of forty-eight Texas birds selected as the personal favorites of illustrator John O'Neill and editor Suzanne Winckler, each accompanied by a personal, scientific, or literary observation by a well-known Texas birder or nature writer.
Author: Lowell M. Schake
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 0595484972
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 374
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Book Description
To love whooping cranes, sandhill cranes, and Kirtland's warblers was easy for Larry Walkinshaw. Saving them from extinction engulfed his life. Journey into Walkinshaw's incredible life drama to discover how his adventures led him onto the pinnacle of ornithological attainment-into that world of birding he so loved and mastered. Join him in the global wilderness of marshlands, deserts, and tundra seeking nature's truths as birds literally hatched, fluttered, and died in his hands. On the Wings of Cranes reveals how cranes and Walkinshaw became synonymous. Recognized as "The Father of International Studies of Gruiformes," he led in the salvation of endangered whooping cranes, greater sandhill cranes, and Kirtland's warblers. At times, heartbreak entered his life, but his perseverance held as he took calculated risks, sacrificed, and struggled to save endangered birds. Beneath the mask of his deliberate and reserved personality resided a uniquely complicated genius who desired to serve both nature and humankind. On the Wings of Cranes extends an invitation to respond to the powers of inspiration, motivation, and self-discipline. The theme of Walkinshaw's life is birding-inspiration its message. Soar with Walkinshaw, from take-off to landing, on the wings of cranes.
Author: Jack E. Davis
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
ISBN: 0871408678
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 475
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Book Description
Winner • Pulitzer Prize for History Winner • Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction Finalist • National Book Critics Circle Award (Nonfiction) A New York Times Notable Book of the Year Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post, NPR, Library Journal, and gCaptain Booklist Editors’ Choice (History) Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence In this “cri de coeur about the Gulf’s environmental ruin” (New York Times), “Davis has written a beautiful homage to a neglected sea” (front page, New York Times Book Review). Hailed as a “nonfiction epic . . . in the tradition of Jared Diamond’s best-seller Collapse, and Simon Winchester’s Atlantic” (Dallas Morning News), Jack E. Davis’s The Gulf is “by turns informative, lyrical, inspiring and chilling for anyone who cares about the future of ‘America’s Sea’ ” (Wall Street Journal). Illuminating America’s political and economic relationship with the environment from the age of the conquistadors to the present, Davis demonstrates how the Gulf’s fruitful ecosystems and exceptional beauty empowered a growing nation. Filled with vivid, untold stories from the sportfish that launched Gulfside vacationing to Hollywood’s role in the country’s first offshore oil wells, this “vast and welltold story shows how we made the Gulf . . . [into] a ‘national sacrifice zone’ ” (Bill McKibben). The first and only study of its kind, The Gulf offers “a unique and illuminating history of the American Southern coast and sea as it should be written” (Edward O. Wilson).
Author: June Osborne
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292787987
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 153
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Book Description
In this invitingly-written book, June Osborne paints a fully detailed portrait of perhaps the best-known hummingbird in the United States, the ruby-throat. There is no mistaking a hummingbird. Even people who hardly know a robin from a sparrow recognize that flash of iridescent feathers and the distinctive hovering flight. So popular have “hummers” become that even casual birdwatchers now travel great distances to hummingbird hot spots to see masses of birds in their annual migrations. Drawing from her own birdwatching experiences, June Osborne offers an “up close and personal” look at a female ruby-throat building her nest and rearing young, as well as an account of a day in the life of a male ruby-throat and stories of the hummers’ migrations between their summer breeding grounds in the United States and Canada and their winter homes in Mexico and Central America. In addition to this life history, Osborne recounts early hummingbird sightings and tells how the bird received its common and scientific names. After an overview of hummingbirds’ distinctive ways of feeding, flying, and conserving energy, she offers a detailed description of the ruby-throat that will help you tell females from males, immature birds from adults, and ruby-throats from similar species. Osborne also takes you on a visit to the “Hummer/Bird Celebration!” at Rockport, reviews hummingbird banding programs, and explains how to attract hummingbirds to your yard or apartment balcony.
Author: Kathleen Kaska
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813042763
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 316
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Book Description
Millions of people know a little bit about efforts to save the whooping crane, thanks to the movie Fly Away Home and annual news stories about ultralight planes leading migratory flocks. But few realize that in the spring of 1941, the population of these magnificent birds--pure white with black wingtips, standing five feet tall with a seven-foot wingspan--had reached an all-time low of fifteen. Written off as a species destined for extinction, the whooping crane has made a slow but unbelievable comeback over the last seven decades. This recovery would have been impossible if not for the efforts of Robert Porter Allen, an ornithologist with the National Audubon Society, whose courageous eight-year crusade to find the only remaining whooping crane nesting site in North America garnered nationwide media coverage. His search and his impassioned lectures about overdevelopment, habitat loss, and unregulated hunting triggered a media blitz that had thousands of citizens on the lookout for the birds during their migratory trips. Allen's tireless efforts changed the course of U.S. environmental history and helped lead to the passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973. Though few people remember him today, his life reads like an Indiana Jones story, full of danger and adventure, failure and success. His amazing story deserves to be told.
Author: Thomas R. Dunlap
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 0199734593
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
Thomas Dunlap shows how bird guides have changed with science and popular interest and how birding's twin activities, conservation and recreation, have over the last 120 years shaped our understanding of nature and supported its preservation as part of the nation and our lives.
Author: Jennifer L. Bristol
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1648431453
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 474
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Book Description
It might seem unlikely that a place designed for the departed could be teeming with life. Cemeteries have a long history of serving the dual purpose of honoring the deceased while also proving a space for the living to gather and grieve in the embrace of nature. Touted as some of the earliest public parks in the country— with mature trees, open grasslands, meadows of wildflowers—cemeteries are also attractive to birds and wildlife. In an age of distractions and disconnection, cemeteries create a sense of place where visitors can reconnect with nature while exploring the cultural history of a region. For bird watchers, cemeteries offer easy walking, open spaces to peer into habitats, and a peaceful place to feel the breeze and listen to the quiet conversations of nature. Cemetery Birding builds upon the unique and approachable experiences introduced in Jennifer L. Bristol’s first book, Parking Lot Birding. While cemeteries offer accessible places to bird watch, Bristol highlights the need to tread carefully and ethically when exploring these sacred spaces. Her treatment of each of the nearly 100 locations provides information about what birds can be observed in various seasons and offers readers a snapshot of the cemetery and community’s history. Filled with rich photos, Bristol deciphers headstone symbolism in “Tombstone Tales” and offers fun facts about individual species of birds in “Tombstone Tails.” Locations range from the heart of Houston to the wide-open spaces of West Texas and every ecoregion in between.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bird watching
Languages : en
Pages : 882
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Book Description
