Beginning with his 1934 Field Guide to the Birds, Roger Tory Peterson introduced literally millions of people to the pleasures of observing birds in the wild. His field guide, which has gone through five editions and sold more than four million copies, fostered an appreciation for the natural world that set the stage for the contemporary environmental movement. When Rachel Carson's Silent Spring sounded a warning about the threat to birds and their habitats in the 1960s, the Peterson field guides had already prepared the public and the scientific community to heed...

Birding can become an addiction. It starts when you hang a bird feeder in the backyard. Then you buy a bird book to identify the birds you see. Then, before you know it, you're keeping a life list and traveling the region, the country, perhaps even the world to catch glimpses of rare birds. Marjorie Adams's birding passion progressed through all these stages and continues today in her tenth decade. In this engaging and informative book, she looks back at her evolution into a full-fledged birder and the concurrent growth of the sport of birding, to which she contributed significantly as a...