Kategoria BISAC: Nature >> Birdwatching Guides

Behold the cormorant: silent, still, cruciform, and brooding; flashing, soaring, quick as a snake. Evolution has crafted the only creature on Earth that can migrate the length of a continent, dive and hunt deep underwater, perch comfortably on a branch or a wire, walk on land, climb up cliff faces, feed on thousands of different species, and live beside both fresh and salt water in a vast global range of temperatures and altitudes, often in close proximity to man. Long a symbol of gluttony, greed, bad luck, and evil, the cormorant...

The Passenger Pigeon in Pennsylvania, published by the Altoona Tribune Company in 1919, appeared just five years after the bird s extinction worldwide. It contains observations and reflections on the migration patterns and behavior of the passenger pigeon, as well as contributions from local amateur ornithologists and nature enthusiasts, including a chapter written by Henry Shoemaker. The work explores folklore and legends surrounding the bird, its typical behavior and biology, the history of its place in the Keystone State, and its decline and disappearance, while also presenting...

A small set of fossilized bones discovered almost thirty years ago led paleontologist Sankar Chatterjee on a lifelong quest to understand their place in our understanding of the history of life. They were clearly the bones of something unusual, a bird-like creature that lived long, long ago in the age of dinosaurs. He called it Protoavis, and the animal that owned these bones quickly became a contender for the title of -oldest known bird.- In 1997, Chatterjee published his findings in the first edition of The Rise of Birds.

Since then Chatterjee and his colleagues...

Reissue of J. A. Baker s extraordinary classic of British nature writing

Despite the association of peregrines with the wild, outer reaches of the British Isles, The Peregrine is set on the flat marshes of the Essex coast, where J A Baker spent a long winter looking and writing about the visitors from the uplands peregrines that spend the winter hunting the huge flocks of pigeons and waders that share the desolate landscape with them.

Including original diaries from which The Peregrine was written and its companion volume The Hill of Summer, this is a beautiful compendium of lyrical...

Lesser Prairie-Chickens have experienced substantial declines in terms of population and the extent of area that they occupy. While they are an elusive species, making it difficult at times to monitor them, current evidence indicates that they have been persistently decreasing in number since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s dramatically affected their core range. In May of 2014, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service listed Lesser Prairie-Chickens as a threatened species, granting them federal protection under the Endangered Species Act, which included a special rule recognizing...