Bird Brother

Bird Brother

Author: Rodney Stotts

Publisher: Island Press

Published: 2022-02-03

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 1642831743

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In Bird Brother, Rodney Stotts shares his unlikely journey to becoming a conservationist and one of America's few Black master falconers. Rodney grew up in Washington, D.C. during the crack epidemic, with guns, drugs, and the threat of incarceration affecting the lives of everyone he knew. He was no exception, but he was also employed by the newly founded Earth Conservation Corps, helping to restore and conserve the polluted Anacostia River. This work eventually sent his life in a different direction, as he began to train to become a master falconer and to develop his own raptor education program and sanctuary. Eye-opening, witty, and moving, Bird Brother is a testament to the healing power of nature, and a reminder that no matter how much heartbreak we've endured, we still have the capacity to give back to our communities and follow our dreams.


The Old Man and His Birds

The Old Man and His Birds

Author: Mirra Ginsburg

Publisher: Greenwillow

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 24

ISBN-13: 9780688046033

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A mysterious old man wears a rich robe, hiding birds that cause the seasons to change.


Manu, the Boy Who Loved Birds

Manu, the Boy Who Loved Birds

Author: Caren Loebel-Fried

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2021-05-31

Total Pages: 50

ISBN-13: 0824892712

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Winner of the 2021 Silver Medal for Best Illustrator, Moonbeam Children's Book Awards On a school trip to Honolulu’s Bishop Museum, Manu and his classmates are excited to see an ancient skirt made with a million yellow feathers from the ‘ō‘ō, a bird native to Hawai‘i that had gone extinct long ago. Manu knew his full name, Manu‘ō‘ōmauloa, meant “May the ‘ō‘ō bird live on” but never understood: Why was he named after a native forest bird that no longer existed? Manu told his parents he wanted to know more about ‘ō‘ō birds and together they searched the internet. The next day, his teacher shared more facts with the class. There was so much to learn! As his mind fills with new discoveries, Manu has vivid dreams of his namesake bird. After a surprise visit to Hawai‘i Island where the family sees native forest birds in their natural setting, Manu finally understands the meaning of his name, and that he can help the birds and promote a healthy forest. Manu, the Boy Who Loved Birds is a story about extinction, conservation, and culture, told through a child’s experience and curiosity. Readers learn along with Manu about the extinct honeyeater for which he was named, his Hawaiian heritage, and the relationship between animals and habitat. An afterword includes in-depth information on Hawai‘i’s forest birds and featherwork in old Hawai‘i, a glossary, and a list of things to do to help. Illustrated with eye-catching, full-color block prints, the book accurately depicts and incorporates natural science and culture in a whimsical way, showing how we can all make a difference for wildlife. The book is also available in a Hawaiian-language edition, ‘O Manu, ke Keiki Aloha Manu, translated by Blaine Namahana Tolentino (ISBN 9780824883430).


The Man Who Loved Birds

The Man Who Loved Birds

Author: Fenton Johnson

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2016-03-04

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0813166616

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Having taken great risks—to immigrate to America, to take monastic vows—Bengali physician Meena Chatterjee and Brother Flavian are each seeking safety and security when they encounter Johnny Faye, a Vietnam vet, free spirit, and expert marijuana farmer. Amid the fields and forests of a Trappist monastery, Johnny Faye patiently cultivates Meena's and Flavian's capacity for faith, transforming all they thought they knew about duty and desire. In turn they offer him an experience of civilization other than war and chaos. But Johnny Faye's law-breaking sets him against a district attorney for whom the law is a tool for ambition rather than justice. Their confrontation leads to a harrowing reckoning that ensnares Dr. Chatterjee and Brother Flavian, who must make a life-or-death choice between an act of justice that may precipitate their ruin or a betrayal that offers salvation. Inspired by the real-life state police kidnapping and murder of a legendary storyteller and petty criminal, The Man Who Loved Birds engages pressing contemporary issues through a timeless narrative of ill-fated romance. Celebrated author Fenton Johnson has woven a seamless, haunting fable exploring the eternal conflicts between free will and destiny, politics and nature, the power of law and the power of love.


Falconer on the Edge

Falconer on the Edge

Author: Rachel Dickinson

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 9780618806232

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Rachel Dickinson profiles falconer Steve Chindgren, a man willing to make extreme sacrifices to continue practicing the sport that has ruled his life. Dickinson arrives at a sense of falconry’s allure: the unpredictable nature of the hunt and the soaring exhilaration of success. Further exploration unveils the enormous emotional cost to a falconer who establishes an extraordinary tie to his birds. When, in the space of two days, Chindgren loses two birds that he’d been training for years, he is plunged into a profound depression that is only deepened when Jomo, his best bird, slows down because of old age. In addition to this challenge, Chindgren faces the danger to falconry that the modern world presents. Grouse habitat is being degraded by mining, agriculture, and gas industry interests. And the number of falconers is dwindling--the corps is graying and has few acolytes. Falconry is a sport that requires persistence, stoicism, and sacrifice; in this captivating account, Dickinson illuminates a fascinating subculture and one of its most hard core personalities.


An Old Man Remembering Birds

An Old Man Remembering Birds

Author: Michael Baughman

Publisher:

Published: 2021-10-30

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13: 9780870711541

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Bird watching is by far the most popular outdoor recreation in the United States. That makes perfect sense, because their freedom of flight makes birds accessible to virtually all people everywhere -- along ocean beaches, lakeshores, rivers and creeks; on remote prairies and urban golf courses; in mountain forests and parched deserts; on Times Square and apartment house roofs; and in back yards everywhere. But due to habitat loss, pollution and climate change, there are three billion fewer birds in America today than there were in 1970. The logical conclusion to be drawn from this sad fact is that we need even more bird-watchers, people who might care enough about these wild, lovely creatures to do whatever they can to reverse this appalling decline. In his 80-plus years around birds, Michael Baughman has learned one immutable lesson: As long as you remain alive and human, the closer you get to birds, the more time you spend among them, the more you love them.


Birds and Men (Collins New Naturalist Library, Book 17)

Birds and Men (Collins New Naturalist Library, Book 17)

Author: E. M. Nicholson

Publisher: HarperCollins UK

Published: 2012-05-31

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 0007406150

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Revealing the impact of civilisation upon our bird life, with particular reference to the species that have come to rely largely on types of habitat greatly modified or actually formed by human action. This edition is exclusive to newnaturalists.com


How Birds Evolve

How Birds Evolve

Author: Douglas J. Futuyma

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2024-10-29

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0691264635

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"Why are male birds often so brightly colored? Why do some birds lay more eggs than others? Will bird species adapt to climate change? In How Birds Evolve, Douglas Futuyma invites readers into the amazing world of bird evolution to answer these and other questions. Futuyma's goal in this book is not to offer a comprehensive evolutionary history of birds, but to explore how the processes of evolution produced the distinctive features and behaviors we observe in birds today as well as their impressive diversity. Using one or two birds per chapters as a lens into broader questions, Futuyma explores how a bird's evolutionary history helps us understand the diversity of species and the bird tree of life and how natural selection explains most of the characteristics of birds from how populations adapt to sexual selection and birds' amazing social behavior. Futuyma concludes by discussing the future of birds, particularly patterns of extinction and whether they can adapt to a changing climate. Ultimately, Futuyman wants readers to see that evolutionary biology helps us to better understand birds, and that the reverse is also true: studies of birds have informed almost every aspect of evolutionary biology, from Darwin to today"--


Among Penguins

Among Penguins

Author: Noah K. Strycker

Publisher:

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13:

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The year he graduated from college, 22-year-old Noah Strycker was dropped by helicopter in a remote Antarctic field camp with two bird scientists and a three months' supply of frozen food. His subjects: more than a quarter million penguins. Compact, industrious, and approachable, the Adélie Penguins who call Antarctica home visit their breeding grounds each Antarctic summer to nest and rear their young before returning to sea. Because of long-term studies, scientists may know more about how these penguins will adjust to climate change than about any other creature in the world. Bird scientists like Noah are less well known. Like the intrepid early explorers of Antarctica, modern scientists drawn to the frozen continent face an utterly inhospitable landscape, one that inspires, isolates, and punishes. With wit, curiosity, and a deep knowledge of his subject, Strycker recounts the reality of life at the end of the Earth--thousand-year-old penguin mummies, hurricane-force blizzards, and day-to-day existence in below freezing temperatures--and delves deep into a world of science, obsession, and birds. Among Penguins weaves a captivating tale of penguins and their researchers on the coldest, driest, highest, and windiest continent on Earth. Birders, lovers of the Antarctic, and fans of first-person adventure narratives will be fascinated by Strycker's book.