Sounds of the Wild: Birds

Sounds of the Wild: Birds Review

Are you ready to soar? Young readers can let their imaginations take flight in Sounds of the Wild: Birds, the extraordinary new title from acclaimed illustrator Maurice Pledger. Five dazzling 3-D pop-up panoramas are enhanced with real bird sounds, bringing the wondrous world of birds to life. With colorful, detailed artwork and informative text, this book takes readers on a journey across the globe — from lush wetlands and tropical forests to remote deserts and mountains — to discover all types of birds big and small.

Bird Sense: What It's Like to Be a Bird

Bird Sense: What It's Like to Be a Bird Review

Most people would love to be able to fly like a bird, but few of us are aware of the other sensations that make being a bird a gloriously unique experience. What is going on inside the head of a nightingale as it sings, and how does its brain improvise? How do desert birds detect rain hundreds of kilometers away? How do birds navigate by using an innate magnetic compass?

Tracing the history of how our knowledge about birds has grown, particularly through advances in technology over the past fifty years, Bird Sense tells captivating stories about how birds interact with one another and their environment. More advanced testing methods have debunked previously held beliefs, such as female starlings selecting mates based on how symmetrical the male’s plumage markings are. (Whereas females can discern the difference between symmetrical and asymmetrical markings, they are not very good at detecting small differences among symmetrically marked males!)

Never before has there been a popular book about how intricately bird behavior is shaped by birds’ senses. A lifetime spent studying birds has provided Tim Birkhead with a wealth of fieldwork experiences, insights, and a unique understanding of birds, all firmly grounded in science. No one who reads Bird Sense can fail to be dazzled by it.

Birds, Beasts, and Relatives

Birds, Beasts, and Relatives Review

Part coming-of-age autobiography and part nature guide, Gerald Durrell’s dazzling sequel to My Family and Other Animals is based on his boyhood on Corfu, from 1933 to 1939. Originally published in 1969 but long out of print, Birds, Beasts, and Relatives is filled with charming observations, amusing anecdotes, boyhood memories, and childlike wonder.

Everything Bird: What Kids Really Want to Know about Birds (Kids Faqs)

Everything Bird: What Kids Really Want to Know about Birds (Kids Faqs) Review

Everything Bird is the newest addition to our popular Kids' FAQs series. The question and answer format packed with photos and kid-appealing layout has made this series stand out from the pack. In addition to providing basic information like habitat, diet, life cycle and history, these books delve into the more unusual questions like Why are vultures so ugly? Perfect for the budding birdwatcher or simply curious kids, this book includes 29 questions from kids with answers including information on more than 60 different types of birds. Includes information on how to get more birds to your yard, but also cautions against interfering with birds in the wild.

The Bedside Book of Birds: An Avian Miscellany

The Bedside Book of Birds: An Avian Miscellany Review

In this stunning assemblage of words and images, novelist and avid birdwatcher Graeme Gibson has crafted an extraordinary tribute to the venerable relationship between humans and birds.

Birds have ever been the symbols of our highest aspirations. As divine messengers, symbols of our yearning for the heavens, or avatars of glorious song and colour, they have stirred our imaginations from the moment we first looked into the sky. Whether as the Christian dove, or Quetzalcoatl—the Aztec Plumed Serpent—or in Plato’s vision of the human soul growing wings and feathers, religion and philosophy have looked to birds as representatives of our better selves—that part of us not bound to the earth.

With the passion of a birdwatcher and hoarder of words, Gibson has spent fifteen years collecting the literary and artistic forms our affinity for birds has taken over the centuries. Birds appear again and again in mythology and folk tales, and in literature by writers as diverse as Ovid, Thomas Hardy, Kafka, Thoreau and T.S. Eliot. They’ve been omens, allegories, disguises and guides; they’ve been worshipped, eaten, feared and loved. Nor does Gibson forget the fascination they hold for science, as the Galapagos finches did for Darwin. Birds figure charmingly and tellingly in the work of such nature writers as Gilbert White, Peter Matthiessen, Farley Mowat and Barry Lopez.

Gorgeously illustrated, woven from centuries of human response to the delights of the feathered tribes, The BedsideBook of Birds is for anyone who is aware of birds, and for everyone who is intrigued by the artistic forms that humanity has created to represent its soul.

From The Bedside Book of Birds ~

Stevenson remembered the story of a monk who had been distracted from his copy-work by the song of a bird. He went into the garden to listen more closely, and when he returned, after what he thought were only a few minutes, he discovered that a century had gone by, that his fellow monks were dead and his ink had turned to dust. The song of the bird had given him a taste of Paradise, where an instant is as a hundred years of earthly time. Was the same true of time in hell, Stevenson asked himself.

Alberto Manguel

Birds, Beasts, and Seas: Nature Poems

Birds, Beasts, and Seas: Nature Poems Review

A rich, delicious treasury of nature poems from around the world—from the pastoral beauty of ancient times to the modern era’s destruction of living things.

The year 2011 marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of New Directions, and what better way to celebrate than to dive into the diversity of its poets reveling in the wonders and joys of nature. Arranged chronologically by each poet’s birth, Birds, Beasts, and Seas showcases the work of over one hundred and twenty poets from the U.S. and abroad, culled from the New Directions library. Beginning with ancient Chinese, Greek, Roman, Inuit, Japanese, Indian, and Persian poets, then dipping into the Troubadours and the Renaissance, the collection gradually blossoms into a constellation of poets from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and into our present. Sappho, Neruda, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Lorca mix with Anne Carson, Inger Christensen, Coral Bracho, and Gu Cheng. Poems cross cultures, link, and converse in paeans to nature and its elegies; in nature’s dangers, mutabilities, and sanctuary; in its myths and scientific revelations. Also highlighted are translations by such luminaries as Samuel Beckett, John Dos Passos, T. S. Eliot, and Robert Lowell. Hidden jewels of nature await your discovery.

Guide for Angry Birds: Tips and Tricks

Guide for Angry Birds: Tips and Tricks Review

This Angry Birds Guide show you how to master the game and surpass your high scores!

The report has everything you ever wanted to know about Angry Birds!

Birds of Paradise: A Novel

Birds of Paradise: A Novel Review

“A full-course meal, a rich, complex and memorable story that will leave you lingering gratefully at [Abu-Jaber’s] table.”—Ron Charles, Washington Post

At thirteen, Felice Muir ran away from home to punish herself for some horrible thing she had done—leaving a hole in the hearts of her pastry-chef mother, her real estate attorney father, and her foodie-entrepreneurial brother. After five years of scrounging for food, drugs, and shelter on Miami Beach, Felice is now turning eighteen, and she and the family she left behind must reckon with the consequences of her actions—and make life-affirming choices about what matters to them most, now and in the future.

Peterson Field Guide to Birds of Western North America, Fourth Edition (Peterson Field Guides)

Peterson Field Guide to Birds of Western North America, Fourth Edition (Peterson Field Guides) Review

Houghton Mifflin Field Guide To Western Birds

Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America

Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds of North America Review

Enjoy birding like never before. A complete guide to birds with superb color photography, up-to-date and detailed range maps, clear and concise text, and a DVD of birdsongs. 1.50 inches tall x 6.00 inches long x 8.00 inches wide

Birds, Nests & Eggs (Take Along Guides)

Birds, Nests & Eggs (Take Along Guides) Review

A fun, informative take-along guide that will help children identify 15 birds. Kid will also learn how and where birds build their homes and all about their young. Plus the guide features activities that are fun and easy to do. There's also a seven-page scrapbook for drawings and notes.Invites young naturalists to spot wildlife. Safety tips are provided and interesting activities are sugested. Color illustrations enhance the presentation. ---HORN BOOKS (Tracks, Scats and Signs)

To Kill a Mocking Bird (A BookCaps Study Guide)

To Kill a Mocking Bird (A BookCaps Study Guide) Review

The perfect companion to Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird," this study guide contains a chapter by chapter analysis of the book, a summary of the plot, and a guide to major characters and themes.

BookCap Study Guides do not contain text from the actual book, and are not meant to be purchased as alternatives to reading the book.

Bird

Bird Review

These astonishing images from Andrew Zuckerman's Bird will offer fine feathered friendship all year.

To Kill a MockingBird Book Summary

To Kill a MockingBird Book Summary Review

This is a summary of To kill a Mockingbird to help you understand the material faster.

The Burgess Bird Book for Children

The Burgess Bird Book for Children Review

This anthology is a thorough introduction to classic literature for those who have not yet experienced these literary masterworks. For those who have known and loved these works in the past, this is an invitation to reunite with old friends in a fresh new format. From Shakespeare’s finesse to Oscar Wilde’s wit, this unique collection brings together works as diverse and influential as The Pilgrim’s Progress and Othello. As an anthology that invites readers to immerse themselves in the masterpieces of the literary giants, it is must-have addition to any library.

The Easy Bird Guide: Western Region: A Quick Identification Guide for All Birders (Birding Series)

The Easy Bird Guide: Western Region: A Quick Identification Guide for All Birders (Birding Series) Review

The Easy Bird Guide: Western Region is the perfect identification guide for beginner and casual birdwatchers of all ages. The authors, all renowned experts, have carefully chosen 340 of the most common birds seen in backyards, in the woods, and near water in western North America. Detailed illustrations of each species are organized by color, pattern, behavior, and habitat, making bird identification fun, easy, and rewarding. The guide also includes practical tips for attracting and feeding birds, information about using binoculars, a glossary of field marks, and a complete species index.

Extreme Birds: The World's Most Extraordinary and Bizarre Birds

Extreme Birds: The World's Most Extraordinary and Bizarre Birds Review

"A wonderful collection of bird superlatives. . . . Fascinating facts and beautiful photographs make this one a winner."
-- Library Journal

Extreme Birds is a photographic showcase of 150 birds at the extremes of nature. It reveals nature's ingenuity and sometimes its sense of humor. The species in this book were chosen for their extraordinary characteristics and for behaviors far beyond the typical. They are the biggest, the fastest, the meanest, the smartest. They build the most intricate nests, they have the most peculiar mating rituals, they dive the deepest and they fly the highest. These are the overachievers of the avian world.

Some examples:

• Most skilled nest builder: The tiny southern masked weaver reveals a surprising grasp of the principles of architecture. In just five days it weaves and knots thousands of fine grass strands to build a complex sphere-like nest that hangs from the tip of an overhead branch.
• Deadliest enemy: The southern cassowary is big (140 pounds), tall (6 feet) and fast (30 mph). This flightless bird can also leap 5 feet into the air and has 5-inch long claws that are capable of stabbing and disemboweling a human being.
• Most creative decorator: The blue bower bird creates an elaborate "bachelor pad" bower and decorates it with colorful baubles. Blue is preferred, and the shinier the better.

Enlivened with entertaining facts and anecdotes, Extreme Birds is an engaging celebration of nature's tremendous imagination. It will appeal to all readers, especially birders and naturalists.