From the award-winning author of The Running Dream and Flipped comes a remarkable portrait of a girl who has hit rock bottom but begins a climb back to herself at a wilderness survival camp. 3:47 a.m. That’s when they come for Wren Clemmens. She’s hustled out of her house and into a waiting car, then a plane, and then taken on a forced march into the desert. This is what happens to kids who’ve gone so far off the rails, their parents don’t know what to do with them anymore. This is wilderness therapy camp. Eight weeks of survivalist camping in the desert. Eight weeks to turn your life around. Yeah, right. The Wren who arrives in the Utah desert is angry and bitter, and blaming everyone but herself. But angry can’t put up a tent. And bitter won’t start a fire. Wren’s going to have to admit she needs help if she’s going to survive. "I read Wild Bird in one long, mesmerized gulp. Wren will break your heart—and then mend it." —Nancy Werlin, National Book Award finalist for The Rules of Survival "Van Draanen’s Wren is real and relatable, and readers will root for her." —VOYA, starred review
During the nineteenth century, Britain maintained a complex network of garrisons to manage its global empire. While these bases helped the British project power and secure trade routes, they served more than just a strategic purpose. During their tours abroad, many British officers engaged in formal and informal scientific research. In this ambitious history of ornithology and empire, Kirsten A. Greer tracks British officers as they moved around the world, just as migratory birds traversed borders from season to season. Greer examines the lives, writings, and collections of a number of ornithologist-officers, arguing that the transnational encounters between military men and birds simultaneously shaped military strategy, ideas about race and masculinity, and conceptions of the British Empire. Collecting specimens and tracking migratory bird patterns enabled these men to map the British Empire and the world and therefore to exert imagined control over it. Through its examination of the influence of bird watching on military science and soldiers' contributions to ornithology, Red Coats and Wild Birds remaps empire, nature, and scientific inquiry in the nineteenth-century world.
Unique encounters with wild birds from the acclaimed scientist and “a dedicated watcher happy to knock down the fourth wall of zoology” (The Wall Street Journal). In his modern classics One Man’s Owl and Mind of the Raven, Bernd Heinrich has written memorably about his relationships with wild ravens and a great horned owl. In One Wild Bird at a Time, Heinrich returns to his great love: close, day-to-day observations of individual wild birds. There are countless books on bird behavior, but Heinrich argues that some of the most amazing bird behaviors fall below the radar of what most birds do in aggregate. Heinrich’s “passionate observations [that] superbly mix memoir and science” lead to fascinating questions—and sometimes startling discoveries (The New York Times Book Review). A great crested flycatcher, while bringing food to the young in their nest, is attacked by the other flycatcher nearby. Why? A pair of Northern flickers hammering their nest-hole into the side of Heinrich’s cabin deliver the opportunity to observe the feeding competition between siblings, and to make a related discovery about nest-cleaning. One of a clutch of redstart warbler babies fledges out of the nest from twenty feet above the ground, and lands on the grass below. It can’t fly. What will happen next? Heinrich “looks closely, with his trademark ‘hands-and-knees science’ at its most engaging, [delivering] what can only be called psychological marvels of knowing” (The Boston Globe). “An engaging memoir of the opportunities for doing scientific research without leaving one’s own backyard.”—Kirkus Reviews
Every aspect of a species' life in the wild -- courtship, nesting, brooding, communication, foraging, flying, fighting -- is covered in text by a leading ornithologist, and photographs by top nature photographers.
Florina lives in a valley in the Swiss Alps with her mother, father, and brother Ursli. One day, while walking in the mountains, she finds a tiny bird that has lost its mother, and Florina takes the bird home to care for it. The girl and the wild bird soon become best friends. She makes food for it using her doll's tea set and gives it a special basket for a bed. When the bird grows up, its wings grow larger and it wants to fly. Florina must decide whether to keep the bird or release it to fly back tp the mountains. This beloved children's story is from the Swiss illustrator and author of A Bell for Ursli. (Ages 4-6)
Birds are the most diverse group of land vertebrates and have evolved to exploit almost every terrestrial niche on earth. They also serve as a natural reservoir for an array of different pathogens that pose serious health risks to human and domestic animal populations, including West Nile virus, highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses, Newcastle Disease virus, and numerous enteric pathogens. Avian diseases are also critically important to the conservation of endemic bird species in many places around the world. This accessible textbook focuses on the dynamics of infectious diseases for wild avian hosts across every level of ecological hierarchy, from the way pathogens interact with the physiology and behavior of individual hosts, the evolutionary and ecological dynamics of the host-parasite interactions occurring within populations, up to the complex biotic and abiotic interactions occurring within biological communities and ecosystems. Parasite-bird interactions are also increasingly occurring in rapidly changing global environments - thus, their ecology is also changing - and this shapes the complex ways by which parasites influence the inter-connected health of birds, humans, and shared ecosystems. Given the key role of birds in ecological communities more broadly, and as the primary host to so many zoonotic pathogens, an understanding of the ecological and evolutionary principles underlying the maintenance, amplification, transmission, and dispersal of these infectious agents is crucial to understanding how to mitigate the negative global impacts of the ever-increasing number of emerging infectious diseases. Although the topics and principles discussed in this book relate to birds, they have a far wider relevance and can also be applied to non-avian, wildlife host-pathogen systems. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that understanding of disease ecology in wild animal populations is paramount to global health. Infectious Disease Ecology of Wild Birds is suitable for both senior undergraduate and graduate students taking courses in avian disease ecology, ecoimmunology, ecology, and conservation. It will also appeal to the many professional parasitologists, ecoimmunologists, ornithologists, behavioural ecologists, conservation biologists, and wildlife biologists requiring a concise overview of the topic.
In her most incisive and insightful book yet, the award-winning author of The Running Dream and Flipped offers a remarkable portrait of a girl who has hit rock bottom, but begins a climb back to herself at a wilderness survival camp in the desert. 5 1/2 x 8 5/16.
This book brings together scientific evidence and experience relevant to the practical conservation of wild birds. The authors worked with an international group of bird experts and conservationists to develop a global list of interventions that could benefit wild birds. For each intervention, the book summarises studies captured by the Conservation Evidence project, where that intervention has been tested and its effects on birds quantified. The result is a thorough guide to what is known, or not known, about the effectiveness of bird conservation actions throughout the world. The preparation of this synopsis was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council and Arcadia.
