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Author: Jack Gedney
Publisher: Heyday Books
ISBN: 9781597145749
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
A book to help the ordinary birdwatcher appreciate the fascinating songs, stories, and science of common birds Jack Gedney's studies of birds provide resonant, affirming answers to the questions: Who is this bird? In what way is it beautiful? Why does it matter? Masterfully linking an abundance of poetic references with up-to-date biological science, Gedney shares his devotion to everyday Western birds in fifteen essays. Each essay illuminates the life of a single species and its relationship to humans, and how these species can help us understand birds in general. A dedicated birdwatcher and teacher, Gedney finds wonder not only in the speed and glistening beauty of the Anna's hummingbird, but also in her nest building. He acclaims the turkey vulture's and red-tailed hawk's roles in our ecosystem, and he venerates the inimitable California scrub jay's work planting acorns. Knowing that we hear birds much more often than we see them, Gedney offers his expert's ear to help us not only identify bird songs and calls but also understand what the birds are saying. The crowd at the suet feeder will never look quite the same again. Join Gedney in the enchanted world of these not-so-ordinary birds, each enlivened by a hand-drawn portrait by artist Anna Kus Park.
Author: Jack Gedney
Publisher: Heyday Books
ISBN: 9781597145749
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 224
Get Book Here
Book Description
A book to help the ordinary birdwatcher appreciate the fascinating songs, stories, and science of common birds Jack Gedney's studies of birds provide resonant, affirming answers to the questions: Who is this bird? In what way is it beautiful? Why does it matter? Masterfully linking an abundance of poetic references with up-to-date biological science, Gedney shares his devotion to everyday Western birds in fifteen essays. Each essay illuminates the life of a single species and its relationship to humans, and how these species can help us understand birds in general. A dedicated birdwatcher and teacher, Gedney finds wonder not only in the speed and glistening beauty of the Anna's hummingbird, but also in her nest building. He acclaims the turkey vulture's and red-tailed hawk's roles in our ecosystem, and he venerates the inimitable California scrub jay's work planting acorns. Knowing that we hear birds much more often than we see them, Gedney offers his expert's ear to help us not only identify bird songs and calls but also understand what the birds are saying. The crowd at the suet feeder will never look quite the same again. Join Gedney in the enchanted world of these not-so-ordinary birds, each enlivened by a hand-drawn portrait by artist Anna Kus Park.
Author: Susan J. Tweit
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1647420377
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 293
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Book Description
Writer Susan Tweit and her economist-turned-sculptor husband Richard Cabe had just settled into their version of a “good life” when Richard saw thousands of birds one day—harbingers of the brain cancer that would kill him two years later. This compelling and intimate memoir chronicles their journey into the end of his life, framed by their final trip together, a 4,000-mile-long delayed honeymoon road trip. As Susan and Richard navigate the unfamiliar territory of brain cancer treatment and learn a whole new vocabulary—craniotomies, adjuvant chemotherapy, and brain geography—they also develop new routines for a mindful existence, relying on each other and their connection to nature, including the real birds Richard enjoys watching. Their determination to walk hand in hand, with open hearts, results in profound and difficult adjustments in their roles. Bless the Birds is not a sad story. It is both prayer and love song, a guide to how to thrive in a world where all we hold dear seems to be eroding, whether simple civility and respect, our health and safety, or the Earth itself. It’s an exploration of living with love in a time of dying—whether personal or global—with humor, unflinching courage, and grace. And it is an invitation to choose to live in light of what we love, rather than what we fear.
Author: Marianne Taylor
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691231907
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 225
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Book Description
A beautifully illustrated exploration of the ways birds cohabit Featuring dramatic and delightful wild bird colonies and communities, How Birds Live Together offers a broad overview of social living in the avian world. From long-established seabird colonies that use the same cliffs for generations to the fast-shifting dynamics of flock formation, leading wildlife writer Marianne Taylor explores the different ways birds choose to dwell together. Through fascinating text, color photos, maps, and other graphics, Taylor examines the advantages of avian sociality and social breeding. Chapters provide detailed information on diverse types of bird colonies, including those species that construct single-family nests close together in trees; those that share large, communal nests housing multiple families; those that nest in tunnels dug into the earth; those that form exposed colonies on open ground and defend them collectively, relying on ferocious aggression; those that live communally on human-made structures in towns and cities; and more. Taylor discusses the challenges, benefits, hazards, and social dynamics of each style of living, and features a wealth of species as examples. Showcasing colonies from the edge of Scotland and the tropical delta of the Everglades to the Namib Desert in Africa, How Birds Live Together gives bird enthusiasts a vivid understanding of avian social communities.
Author: Scott Weidensaul
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780865475915
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 436
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Book Description
Scott Weidensaul follows hawks over the Mexican coastal plains, Bar-tailed Godwits that hitchhike on gale winds 7,000 miles nonstop across the Pacific from Alaska to New Zealand, and the Myriad Songbirds whose numbers have dwindled so dramatically in recent years.
Author: Noah Strycker
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 159463341X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
"[Strycker] thinks like a biologist but writes like a poet." -- Wall Street Journal An entertaining and profound look at the lives of birds, illuminating their surprising world—and deep connection with humanity. Birds are highly intelligent animals, yet their intelligence is dramatically different from our own and has been little understood. As we learn more about the secrets of bird life, we are unlocking fascinating insights into memory, relationships, game theory, and the nature of intelligence itself. The Thing with Feathers explores the astonishing homing abilities of pigeons, the good deeds of fairy-wrens, the influential flocking abilities of starlings, the deft artistry of bowerbirds, the extraordinary memories of nutcrackers, the lifelong loves of albatrosses, and other mysteries—revealing why birds do what they do, and offering a glimpse into our own nature. Drawing deep from personal experience, cutting-edge science, and colorful history, Noah Strycker spins captivating stories about the birds in our midst and shares the startlingly intimate coexistence of birds and humans. With humor, style, and grace, he shows how our view of the world is often, and remarkably, through the experience of birds. You’ve never read a book about birds like this one.
Author: Kenn Kaufman
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780618159888
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 708
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Book Description
The bestselling natural history of birds, lavishly illustrated with 600 colorphotos, is now available for the first time in flexi binding.
Author: Jennifer Ackerman
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735223033
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Genius of Birds, a radical investigation into the bird way of being, and the recent scientific research that is dramatically shifting our understanding of birds -- how they live and how they think. “There is the mammal way and there is the bird way.” But the bird way is much more than a unique pattern of brain wiring, and lately, scientists have taken a new look at bird behaviors they have, for years, dismissed as anomalies or mysteries –– What they are finding is upending the traditional view of how birds conduct their lives, how they communicate, forage, court, breed, survive. They are also revealing the remarkable intelligence underlying these activities, abilities we once considered uniquely our own: deception, manipulation, cheating, kidnapping, infanticide, but also ingenious communication between species, cooperation, collaboration, altruism, culture, and play. Some of these extraordinary behaviors are biological conundrums that seem to push the edges of, well, birdness: a mother bird that kills her own infant sons, and another that selflessly tends to the young of other birds as if they were her own; a bird that collaborates in an extraordinary way with one species—ours—but parasitizes another in gruesome fashion; birds that give gifts and birds that steal; birds that dance or drum, that paint their creations or paint themselves; birds that build walls of sound to keep out intruders and birds that summon playmates with a special call—and may hold the secret to our own penchant for playfulness and the evolution of laughter. Drawing on personal observations, the latest science, and her bird-related travel around the world, from the tropical rainforests of eastern Australia and the remote woodlands of northern Japan, to the rolling hills of lower Austria and the islands of Alaska’s Kachemak Bay, Jennifer Ackerman shows there is clearly no single bird way of being. In every respect, in plumage, form, song, flight, lifestyle, niche, and behavior, birds vary. It is what we love about them. As E.O Wilson once said, when you have seen one bird, you have not seen them all.
Author: Kimball Garrett
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780964081055
Category : Bird watching
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
A pocket-sized photographic guide to the common birds of the Los Angeles region with full-page color photographs of each bird and accompanying identification information. Covers over 300 birds located within a 50 mile radius of downtown Los Angeles. Also includes the basics of bird watching, attracting birds to your yard, selecting binoculars, and a regional checklist. Written by local birding experts ? perfect for beginning and intermediate birders.
Author: Timothy Beatley
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 164283047X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 271
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Book Description
How does a bird experience a city? A backyard? A park? As the world has become more urban, noisier from increased traffic, and brighter from streetlights and office buildings, it has also become more dangerous for countless species of birds. Warblers become disoriented by nighttime lights and collide with buildings. Ground-feeding sparrows fall prey to feral cats. Hawks and other birds-of-prey are sickened by rat poison. These name just a few of the myriad hazards. How do our cities need to change in order to reduce the threats, often created unintentionally, that have resulted in nearly three billion birds lost in North America alone since the 1970s? In The Bird-Friendly City, Timothy Beatley, a longtime advocate for intertwining the built and natural environments, takes readers on a global tour of cities that are reinventing the status quo with birds in mind. Efforts span a fascinating breadth of approaches: public education, urban planning and design, habitat restoration, architecture, art, civil disobedience, and more. Beatley shares empowering examples, including: advocates for “catios,” enclosed outdoor spaces that allow cats to enjoy backyards without being able to catch birds; a public relations campaign for vultures; and innovations in building design that balance aesthetics with preventing bird strikes. Through these changes and the others Beatley describes, it is possible to make our urban environments more welcoming to many bird species. Readers will come away motivated to implement and advocate for bird-friendly changes, with inspiring examples to draw from. Whether birds are migrating and need a temporary shelter or are taking up permanent residence in a backyard, when the environment is safer for birds, humans are happier as well.
Author: Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
ISBN: 0545699819
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 36
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Book Description
Young readers get an introduction to twenty different types of birds, with breathtaking paper-cuts by newcomer Dylan Metrano! "Chickadee wears a wee black cap.Jay is loud and bold.Nuthatch perches upside-down.Finch is clothed in gold."Young readers are fascinated with birds in their world. Every Day Birds helps children identify and learn about common birds. After reading Every Day Birds, families can look out their windows with curiosity--recognizing birds and nests and celebrating the beauty of these creatures!Every Day Birds focuses on twenty North American birds, with a poem and descriptions written by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater and beautiful paper-cuttings by first-time picture book illustrator Dylan Metrano. Interesting facts about each bird are featured in the back of the book.
