10,000 Birds

AUGUST 3, 2021

It’s a big subject that has been embraced by biologists Barbara Ballentine and Jeremy Hyman in Bird Talk: An Exploration of Avian Communication, a largish, book recently published by Comstock Publishing Associates, an imprint of Cornell University Press. It encompasses movement and plumage and even smell. There is so much here!

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North America Birds Research America 279

10,000 Birds

JULY 1, 2014

I love reading children’s books, even though my child is well over the age when she asks to have them read at bedtime and my nephews fall asleep all too easily after playing lacrosse all day. Here are three excellent but very different children’s books I enjoyed this year (two were published in 2013, one in 2011).

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10,000 Birds

JUNE 2, 2015

Producing a book about birds and nesting is a dangerous business. Second, reading about birds courting and parenting brings out the tendency to identify, which leads directly to anthropomorphism, the tendency to assign birds human emotions and thoughts. Some people love books like that. The book is divided into three parts.

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10,000 Birds

APRIL 6, 2021

His second book on migration is a tale of many birds and many research studies all connected by the theme of migration and by his thoughtful narrative voice. The book is organized into ten chapters, framed by a Prologue and Epilogue focused on Weidensaul’s banding experience in Denali National Park.

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10,000 Birds

JULY 3, 2012

Life Along the Delaware Bay: Cape May, Gateway to a Million Shorebirds , by Lawrence Niles, Joanna Burger, and Amanda Dey, is a book with a mission. The numbers, as detailed in this book, are alarming: the horseshoe crab harvest grew from less than 100,000 in 1992 to over 2.5 million in the late 1990’s.

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Delaware New Jersey Eggs Medical Research 237

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 6, 2022

They may be about bird eggs ( The Most Perfect Thing: The Inside (and Outside) of a Bird’s Egg , 2016), or a 17th-century ornithologist ( Virtuoso by Nature: The Scientific Worlds of Francis Willughby, 2016), or How Bullfinches learn songs from humans ( The Wisdom of Birds: An Illustrated History of Ornithology.

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10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 2, 2012

This is the birding adventure book supreme. Gooddie gets the book off to a quick start by describing his love affair with pittas (“the ultimate forest prize”), and detailing his decision to give up a good career as sales director of an audio manufacturing company (“my life was out of whack”). (He This is a travel adventure book.

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10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 2, 2014

So, when Redgannet asked me if I was interested in reviewing Phillipps’ Field Guide to the Birds of Borneo: Sabah, Sarawak, Brunei and Kalimantan, Third Edition , by Quentin Phillipps and Karen Phillipps, a book he had acquired at Birdfair, I hesitated. Did I dare dip my toe into this catalog of tantalizing species?

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Brunei Asia Birds China 233

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 5, 2013

I think every naturalist in the United States knows the outlines of this urban tale: The pristine marshes of New Jersey are poisoned by pollution, toxic waste, pig farms, and probably every single way in which human beings can destroy the environment. Fortunately, the book starts with an introduction to the places that comprise the 30.4

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New Jersey Legislation Mammals Pigs 201

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 15, 2013

The single greatest challenge facing any book of science writing is balance. The authors resist getting mystical or sentimental, nor do they unduly move humans front and center except as fellow-beings that affect the environment their subjects live in (despite the subtitle.) Pinyon Jay by Dave Menke of the US FWS.

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Humane Stray Dog Emotional Science 202

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 4, 2022

Mosco is also the author of Birding Is My Favorite Video Game: Cartoons about the Natural World (2018, a collection of Bird and Moon comics); co-author of several children’s books, including The Atlas Obscura Explorer’s Guide for the World’s Most Adventurous Kid (2018) with Dylan Thuras and Joy Ang, Butterflies Are Pretty … Gross!

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10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

The length of each bird species account varies, depending on whether the bird is native or a “visitor” (the book’s term for migrant) or vagrant, breeding or non breeding. The book is entitled South Georgia, but it also covers nearby areas including the South Sandwich Islands, Shag and Clerke Rocks.)

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Critter News

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

Another book I want to read! Her last book, Field Notes from a Catastrophe, outlined evidence collated from sites across the planet showing how global warming is changing the world. Tags: climate global warming extinction books endangered species. I'm a glutton for depressing punishment!

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Humane Endangered Species New York Times New York 100

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 14, 2020

This year has been bountiful in books about bird behavior (reference and otherwise) from the likes of David Allen Sibley , Helen Macdonald, Jennifer Ackerman , Wenfei Tong, and others. How, to humans, is “behavior” separate from the bird itself? What do we mean, anyway, by bird “behavior”? One or the other.

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10,000 Birds

JANUARY 2, 2018

He brings to this book an academic background in biology and horticulture and, more importantly, decades of experience developing strategies for the best backyard bird feeding practices. The book is focused on suburban living, with little attention given to the unique challenges of urban bird feeding.

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New York City Birds Squirrels Woodpeckers 189

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 17, 2014

Nearly wiped out by human heedlessness, development, and pesticide use, under the protection of the Endangered Species Act this handsome fish eagle has made a stunning comeback, rebounding in numbers and recolonizing areas where many thought they were gone forever. As an experiment, I also ran this book by a non-birding friend.

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Bald Eagle Eagles Endangered Species Washington 252

10,000 Birds

APRIL 9, 2013

These are just three of the 448 great things to do in nature before you grow up that are covered in illustrated detail in The Kids’ Outdoor Adventure Book by Stacy Tornio and Ken Keffer. Stacy and Ken’s wonderfully written book takes this post 438 steps further and will delight both children and parents alike.

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Milwaukee Camels Mongolia Oklahoma 278

10,000 Birds

JUNE 12, 2011

Despite feathers being such a large and essential aspect of birdness I did not know much about them, at least until I read Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle , the fascinating new book by Thor Hansen. The two strands are well woven together both in the introduction and throughout the rest of the book. Feathers as toothpicks?

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Reptiles Bats Eggs Humane 245

10,000 Birds

MARCH 30, 2012

So a book about birds by Julie Zickefoose, featuring her writing and art, some of which has been featured in different forms on her blog, is guaranteed to be a hit with me. First of all, the 384-page book is beautiful from hardcover to hardcover, literally. But her writing is not the dry text of a biology book or scientific paper.

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Wildlife Rehabilitation Woodpeckers Emotional Hunting 262

10,000 Birds

JUNE 6, 2017

As a birder who struggles to hear and identify bird sound, this is the question continually on my mind as I write about this book. And, beyond the book itself, there is an audio component, a web site that allows you to play every spectrogram in the book. Yes, if you are going to use this book, you must read the Introduction!

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North America America Sparrows Birds 189

10,000 Birds

JULY 19, 2013

From Owls in the Family to Wesley the Owl , the narrative in which a human interacts with another species and learns a bit about life along the way has long been a popular and affecting one. That said, the book contains little that is likely to impress the seasoned birder. Reviews book review hummingbirds'

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10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 18, 2021

Every now and then you read a book which you believe should be read by everyone on the planet. Nature’s Best Hope by American entomologist and conservationist, Doug Tallamy, is such a book. The book is simply yet persuasively written, filled with scientific and historical evidence to make his case.

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10,000 Birds

MARCH 9, 2023

Yes, I had local bird books, but only during my second tour of Costa Rica did I finally buy a mammal guide, and only after my trip to Colombian Amazon did I obtain a habitat guide. I had some books on worldwide biomes, but they were too general to help me understand the ecosystems I was about to dive into.

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10,000 Birds

MAY 17, 2020

That piece of information, along with many others, comes from Kroodsma’a new book, Birdsong for the Curious Naturalist : Your Guide to Listening — and you have to love the “nearly.” And that’s part of the point of the book, and its charm – how much there is still to be discovered in the realm of birdsong. Except he doesn’t!

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10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 25, 2016

He likes books too, which made him the ideal reviewer for Cat Wars: The Devastating Consequences of a Cuddly Killer. There is evidence that toxoplasma leads, in humans, to an elevated risk of mental illness and depression. Mark Gamin, a Cleveland lawyer, likes cats and birds both.

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Critter News

DECEMBER 5, 2009

By the way, if you ever read Jared Diamond's Collapse, you'll understand why I also think this is the perfect response to his book. He wants to save the planet for humans alone. Tags: nature climate change human behavior environment uganda. I believe we have not earned that privilege.

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Humane Uganda Tagged 100

10,000 Birds

MAY 7, 2019

But, sometimes an appreciation of birds and birding requires more than a reference book with images of birds and facts about their identifying field marks. There are large avian handbooks and small ‘how-to bird’ guides, and quite a few excellent books of both types have been published. And, each essay tells a story.

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North America Birds Prairie Dogs Barn Owls 138

10,000 Birds

MARCH 27, 2020

Suzie wrote about her experiences as a bird rehabber in Flyaway: How A Wild Bird Rehabber Sought Adventure and Found Her Wings (2009) and used those experiences as the source for her fictional children’s book, Hawk Hill (1996). How did you come up with the idea for the book? The book is darkly funny. photo by John Huba.

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Wildlife Rehabilitation Bald Eagle Eagles Wildlife 279

4 The Love Of Animals

AUGUST 18, 2010

I recently got a chance to read a book called Scent of the Missing: Love and Partnership with a Search-and-Rescue Dog. The book is an amazing and heartfelt look at the unique partnership and bond that search and rescue dogs have with their handlers. The book follows the story of Susannah and her dog Puzzle. Wow, and wow.

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Rescue Dogs Humane Hamburgers 100

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 22, 2019

But I insisted he try the blood and violence guy, and he humored me, only to send me, later, a longish email, pointing out the flaws in my judgment and in the book and the author, and closing with this: “Since I didn’t care for any of his characters, I really didn’t care who killed whom.”. Fair enough.

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4 The Love Of Animals

MARCH 1, 2010

We recently got a review copy of a great new book called Shift Your Habit: Easy Ways to Save Money, Simplify Your Life, and Save the Planet , which is going to be available on March 9th. We really enjoyed the book a lot! The author, Elizabeth Rogers, is also the co-author of the New York Times bestseller The Green Book.

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Purebred Humane Society Of The United States Pedigree Shelters 100

Critter News

JULY 18, 2009

Over the years, I've noticed that the role of animals jumps out at me in any book I read. It's a book by Tracy Kidder about Dr. Paul Farmer, an international health advocate who made his name from his work in Haiti and his fight against Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (MDR). He had to take a life to save humans.

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Haiti Animal Vivisection Medical 100

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 3, 2012

What if, in turn, the discovery that the species was not truly extinct held the key to saving humanity from another, even more devestating flu outbreak? It takes a skilled hand to make the characters and threads equally compelling, and if they are not, the book feels unbalanced. This, I am sorry to say, broke the book for me.

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10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 24, 2024

The “clickbait” title for this post could well have been “The gays are making our bears queer” but no, this is a book review, not a cable news show. It is however, a review with a high potential for offense, hurt feelings and other emotional drama that normally drives us all into fields and woods to watch birds.

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Emotional Bears Birds Humane 246

4 The Love Of Animals

MAY 5, 2011

We always love reading books about animals, and from time to time we get to review new books to share with our readers! This book explores the special connection and bond between humans and dogs. An adorable book, full of adorable photos and a great message of how love. This illustrated book is a real gem!

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Critter News

MARCH 31, 2009

For those who can't handle the visuals, now it's available as an audio book. Earthlings is a feature-length documentary about how dependent human beings are on animals, primarily in five key areas: pets, food, clothing, entertainment and science. It's supposed to be so intense, it turns people into vegans (Ellen DeGeneres for one.)

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Humane Society Of The United States Animal Abuse Phoenix Ethical Treatment 100

10,000 Birds

MAY 6, 2011

The temptation is even stronger for popularizers, who have to condense and choose a focus that will appeal to the book-buying public. After all, the behaviors we know as “morals&# do make it much easier to live in the groups we humans find ourselves in, and have been forced to adapt as the kinds of groups we live in change.

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