"In this elegant narrative, celebrated naturalist Ted Floyd guides you through a year of becoming a better birder. Choosing 200 top avian species to teach key lessons, Floyd introduces a new, holistic approach to bird watching and shows how to use the tools of the 21st century to appreciate the natural world we inhabit together whether city, country or suburbs." -- From book jacket.
Until Flynn’s neighbor in North Carolina offered him one, he had never considered whether he wanted a peacock. His family became the owners of not one but three charming yet fickle birds: Carl, Ethel, and Mr. Pickle. Here he chronicles their first year as peacock owners, from struggling to build a pen to assisting the local bird doctor in surgery to triumphantly watching a peahen lay her first egg. He also examines the history of peacocks, from their appearance in the Garden of Eden. And Flynn travels across the globe to learn more about the birds firsthand. His book offers surprising lessons about love, grief, fatherhood, and family. -- adapted from jacket.
Who knew that the morepork, our forest-dwelling owl, can turn its head 270 degrees? Or that the eastern bar-tailed godwit doubles its body weight before undertaking an epic and continuous migration of 11,000 kilometres? Or that the tui has a specially placed voicebox, enabling it to duet with itself, sometimes producing sounds too high-frequency for humans to hear? Zany, off-kilter, wondrous and wild, The Brilliance of Birds gives a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the lives of some of New Zealand's feathered friends.
Across the world, cats are loved as pets or are kept or tolerated for their role in controlling some animal pests. But cats, both pets and feral, also kill many native animals and this toll can be enormous. Cats have been remarkably successful in Australia, spreading pervasively across the continent and many islands, occurring in all environments, and proving to be adept and adaptable hunters. A large proportion of Australia’s distinctive fauna is threatened and recent research highlights the significant role that cats play in the decline and extinction of native species. Cats in Australia brings this research together, documenting the extent to which cats have subverted, and are continuing to subvert, Australia’s biodiversity. But the book does much more than spotlight the impacts of cats on Australian nature. It describes the origins of cats and their global spread, their long-standing and varying relationship with people, their global impacts and their ecology. It also seeks to describe the challenge of managing cats, and the options available to constrain their impacts.
In 1838, John Gould, the 'father of Australian ornithology' visited Australia with the intention of gathering material for his great work on Australian birds. In the resulting publication, The Birds of Australia: In Seven Volumes (1848), and the accompanying Supplement (1869), Gould named, for the first time, no fewer than 32 Australian bird species. Gould's words about the Norfolk Island Kaka were prophetic-the last bird of its kind died in a cage in London in 1851. Since then, a number of other species illustrated in The Birds of Australia have become extinct and others are now facing extinction. John Gould's Extinct and Endangered Birds of Australia features 59 plates of birds from Gould's eight-volume work, birds that today are threatened or that no longer exist. Featuring exquisite full-colour lithographs reproduced from the National Library of Australia's copy of The Birds of Australia, this book gives an insight into the history of each bird's European discovery, as well as its subsequent fortunes or misfortunes.
White Terns are native throughout the world’s tropics and subtropics, where they breed almost exclusively on remote islands that are free of predators like cats, dogs, rats, and mongooses. Historically, this was also true in Hawai‘i, but in 1961 a pair of White Terns laid an egg and raised a chick near Hanauma Bay. Since then their numbers in the city of Honolulu have steadily increased, and in 2007 the White Tern, also known by its Hawaiian name, Manu-o-Kū, was designated the official bird of the City and County of Honolulu. Other native seabirds nest on O‘ahu and its nearby islands, but the graceful White Tern is the only species known to lay its eggs in the city’s nonnative trees, on window ledges, and on other man-made structures, making Honolulu unique among world cities. People who live in apartment buildings and work in office towers can watch parents brooding eggs and feeding chicks. An energetic fishing bird, the Manu-o-Kū can fly far from land in its search for fish and squid. Sailors on traditional voyaging canoes keep a close eye on them: as the sun starts to go down, the birds head home, effectively providing the bearing of nearby islands. Today, White Terns are a common sight in Honolulu, from downtown parks to Nu‘uanu and Mānoa valleys to bustling Waikīkī, and the photogenic birds are gaining in popularity as their range increases. In bringing together data about White Terns from here and abroad, marine biologist Susan Scott has crafted a reliable, informative resource filled with remarkable photographs for anyone curious about Manu-o-Kū, Honolulu’s official bird.
The New Zealand bird views series highlights the common birds in New Zealand - the birds we view every day but tend to take for granted because they are always there. This volume presents over 100 previously unpublished photographs of the three species of common tern in New Zealand: Black-fronted tern, Caspian tern, White-fronted tern. The book shows birds flying, feeding, courting, nesting and raising their young. The text provides some background detail and the photos are used to illustrate the birds' lives as much as possible.
