This gloriously illustrated volume provides comprehensive college-level information about birds and their environments in a style accessible to nonscientists and teachers the world over.The "Handbook of Bird Biology" covers all major topics, from anatomy and physiology to ecology, behavior, and conservation biology. One full chapter addresses vocal communication and is accompanied by a CD of bird vocalizations. Produced by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology's world-renowned Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds, the CD illustrates key elements of bioacoustics.The book's text was written by 12 leading ornithologists and illustrated by respected photographers and acclaimed artist John Schmitt. It includes an extensive glossary and index, a list of the common and scientific names of all birds mentioned in the text, author profiles, suggested readings following each chapter, and a complete reference section.The "Handbook" serves as the backbone of the Lab's popular Home Study Course in Bird Biology, a self-paced course that can be taken from anywhere in the world, by anyone with a serious interest in birds who would like guidance from professional ornithologists. Comprehensive and readable guide covering all major topicsFree CD of bird vocalizations enclosedExtensive glossary and indexList of all common and scientific namesSuggested readingsComplete reference sectionCompanion to the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology's popular Home Study Course in Bird Biology

    There's no need to look through dozens of photos of birds that don't live in the Carolinas. This book features 140 species of Carolina birds, organized by color for ease of use. Do you see a yellow bird and don't know what it is? Go to the yellow section to find out. Fact-filled information, a compare feature, range maps and detailed photographs help to ensure that you positively identify the birds that you see.

    The introduction contains illustrations of the main leaves, buds, and firs you are likely to find, and these provide the starting point for identification by leading you to a 'key' species.Within each tree family there is a list of key species and a guide to the most important features to look for when identifying a particular tree from that family. Then individual species are clearly described and a detailed illustration is given on the same page.Covering all the tree species found outside the major arboretums, from the olive tree to the eucalyptus, this is one of the most important tree guides to have appeared in the last 20 years. The illustrations are annotated with essential identification features, and the text highlights the most important things to look for to aid fast and accurate identification. There is also coverage of all the species native to Southern Europe.

    It is the most complete photographic guide to British birds ever published and the only one to be designed to give everything that you need on each spread in a simple-to-use format. Every text entry covers identification of adults and juveniles, songs and calls, and where they are most likely to be found.Illustrated with specially commissioned photography and maps to show where in Britain the birds are found and at what time of year, this accessible guide also features cross-references to similar-looking species, containing everything a birdwatcher needs to know in one, easy-to-use, portable volume. It is the perfect photographic field guide for the birdwatching beginner.

    Its impressive vocal abilities, its propensity to play and clown, and its willingness to interact with people, make the magpie one of our most well-known birds.This insightful book presents a comprehensive account of the behavior of one of Australia's best-loved icons. It reveals the extraordinary capabilities of the magpie, including its complex social behavior, in a highly readable text. The author brings together much of what we know about the magpie's biology and behavior, including her latest research on magpie vocalization as well as aspects of anatomy, physiology, development and health not published previously.

    In this book you will find the Hairy Seadevil, the spectacular Sulawesi Naked Bat, and in the depths of the limestone caves in Slovenia, the Olm, a pink, four-legged, sightless salamander that lives for a hundred years. In fascinating vignettes, Flannery offers the true evolutionary tale of how each of these bizarre creatures came to look the way they do. Alongside each historical account is a stunning hand painted color reproduction (life-size in the original painting) by Schouten.Filled with purple-faced apes, jagged toothed dolphins, antlered lizards, Astonishing Animals is a remarkable collection of the world’s most incredible creatures and the stories behind their remarkable survival into a modern age.

    Covering all the resident, migrant and vagrant birds of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, this book describes some 1388 species in total.

    Today these magnificent forests have declined to a fraction of their original extent, threatening such species as the gopher tortoise, the red-cockaded woodpecker, and the Venus fly-trap. Conservationists have proclaimed longleaf restoration a major goal, but has it come too late?In Looking for Longleaf, Lawrence S. Earley explores the history of these forests and the astonishing biodiversity of the longleaf ecosystem, drawing on extensive research and telling the story through first-person travel accounts and interviews with foresters, ecologists, biologists, botanists, and landowners. For centuries, these vast grass-covered forests provided pasture for large cattle herds, in addition to serving as the world's greatest source of naval stores. They sustained the exploitative turpentine and lumber industries until nearly all of the virgin longleaf had vanished. Looking for Longleaf demonstrates how, in the twentieth century, forest managers and ecologists struggled to understand the special demands of longleaf and to halt its overall decline. The compelling story Earley tells here offers hope that with continued human commitment, the longleaf pine might not just survive, but once again thrive.Covering 92 million acres from Virginia to Texas, the longleaf pine ecosystem was, in its prime, one of the most extensive and biologically diverse ecosystems in North America. Today these magnificent forests have declined to a fraction of their original extent, threatening such species as the gopher tortoise, the red-cockaded woodpecker, and the Venus fly-trap. Lawrence S. Earley explores the history of these forests and the astonishing biodiversity within them, drawing on extensive research and telling the story through first-person travel accounts and interviews with foresters, ecologists, biologists, botanists, and landowners. The compelling story Earley tells here offers hope that with continued human commitment, the longleaf pine might not just survive, but once again thrive.

    This new collection of stunning wildlife photographs represents the best images taken by top nature photographers around the world that have been submitted to the 2004 Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. Featuring more than 100 unforgettable pictures - covering natural subjects from plants to endangered animals and underwater life to landscapes - that display the beauty of the natural world. Selected from more than 19,000 entries, representing at least 60 countries, these images will comprise the winning and commended pictures from the world's largest and most prestigious wildlife photography competition. Behind-the-scenes information for each picture is given in a short caption, which includes photographic details. The full collection of photographs will be available in June 2004.

    Carroll is exceptionally skilled at capturing nature on the page. In Self-Portrait with Turtles, he reflects on his own life, recounting the crucial moments that shaped his passions and abilities. Beginning with his first sighting of a wild turtle at age eight, Carroll describes his lifelong fascination with swamps and the creatures that inhabit them. He also traces his evolution as an artist, from the words of encouragement he received in high school to his college days in Boston to his life with his wife and family. Self-Portrait with Turtles is a remarkable memoir, a marvelous and exhilarating account of a life well lived.

    The book is lavishly illustrated with full color photographs." - Choice The only great apes found in Asia, these arboreal wizards are by nature elusive and solitary, and inhabit nearly inaccessible tropical rainforests. The tragedy is that orangutans are almost extinct, surviving in the wild only on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra where human influx is rapidly appropriating their habitat.Based on fifteen years of research, this extraordinary and definitive book focuses on orangutan intelligence and behavior.This book includes:A scientific history of orangutans Detailed descriptions of orangutans and their natural habitat Astonishing behavior patterns Rehabilitation operations at Camp Leakey and Wanariset The complex politics of orangutan rescue work Results of orangutans released back into the forest Updated resources What the future holds for these primates. With one hundred color photographs taken by the author during her visits to the rainforests, Orangutans is an absorbing and instructive look at the unusual world of orangutans.

    Here, in one compact volume, is detailed information about the world's amazing diversity of living things. Learn about the lives and habits of plants and animals both familiar and exotic, domestic and dangerous. Discover, too, the intricate and amazing workings of the human body.The volume also presents information about earthquakes and volcanoes, stars and planets, tornadoes and floods – all the fascinating phenomena that play a vital part in the world in which we live, on land, in the sea, and right out to the farthest reaches of the universe.Nature comprises 11 chapters, each structured as a series of self-contained double-page spreads dealing with one aspect of the subject. Simple, direct language and detailed, atmospheric illustrations and photographs will engage young readers and encourage them to discover for themselves the world around them.

    This universal truth unites three bodies of thought--economics, evolution, and history--that have developed largely in mutual isolation. Here, Geerat Vermeij undertakes a groundbreaking and provocative exploration of the facts and theories of biology, economics, and geology to show how processes common to all economic systems--competition, cooperation, adaptation, and feedback--govern evolution as surely as they do the human economy, and how historical patterns in both human and nonhuman evolution follow from this principle.Using a wealth of examples of evolutionary innovations, Vermeij argues that evolution and economics are one. Powerful consumers and producers exercise disproportionate controls on the characteristics, activities, and distribution of all life forms. Competition-driven demand by consumers, when coupled with supply-side conditions permitting economic growth, leads to adaptation and escalation among organisms. Although disruptions in production halt or reverse these processes temporarily, they amplify escalation in the long run to produce trends in all economic systems toward greater power, higher production rates, and a wider reach for economic systems and their strongest members.Despite our unprecedented power to shape our surroundings, we humans are subject to all the economic principles and historical trends that emerged at life's origin more than 3 billion years ago. Engagingly written, brilliantly argued, and sweeping in scope, Nature: An Economic History shows that the human institutions most likely to preserve opportunity and adaptability are, after all, built like successful living things.

    Have you ever wondered what the birds in your garden get up to when they're not tucking into peanuts and seeds on the birdtable? This book takes us, month by month, into the secret lives of our most familiar garden birds, revealing inspiring, intriguing and scandalous real-life dramas.

    . . . Human residents of the Sonoran Desert are sometimes not completely comfortable when confronted by the wild creatures with whom they share this fragile habitat. But have no fear—please! Not only do these critters mean you no harm, they can also be a source of immense delight. In this entertaining guidebook, naturalist Jonathan Hanson introduces readers to the satisfaction of attracting and enjoying desert wildlife. Whether your home is deep within the city limits or on what is (currently) the edge of human settlement, you can turn your backyard into a miniature wildlife refuge by providing a simple combination of food, water, and habitat. An appropriately landscaped yard can become a home for a bevy of birds, beasts, and bugs, while even a condo patio can attract colorful hummingbirds and butterflies. Hanson advises you on what kind of birdseed to put out to attract the most interesting avian species, how to tell the difference between rabbits and jackrabbits, and when to worry about roving reptiles—which really isn't all that often. He'll even help you pick out a pair of binoculars to heighten your enjoyment. Not all desert creatures offer people a positive experience, and Hanson tells how to cope with those that are sometimes considered pests—whether it's the Gila woodpecker announcing its presence on your roof at five in the morning, the rattlesnake slithering unconcerned across your porch, the coyote running amok with a taste for wandering housecats, or the aforementioned woodrat homesteading in a major appliance or car engine. From bears to bees to "creepy crawlies"—scorpions, spiders, and the like—he lets you know when you need to be cautious . . . and when you simply need to give a wild animal its space. If you live in the desert, you're part of the desert. This book, generously laced with humor and brimming with helpful information, can turn you from a mere bystander into an active participant in an environment in which we all—people and wildlife—must coexist.

    Many of the specimens still standing today have been around for well over two thousand years. Tremendous in size and bizarre in appearance, they have provided food, medicine, and places of refuge and worship to countless peoples, even serving as prisons and tombs on occasion. Long before European explorers opened up the African continent, the news of these "gnarled upside-down giants" had astonished the world of science and stoked the imagination of naturalists everywhere. Thomas Pakenham chronicles his personal encounters with the baobabs of Africa, Australia, Madagascar, and America and shares the countless superstitions and myths, as well as the often-strange history, that surround these enigmatic trees. With 60 color photos and 144 pages with color throughout, The Remarkable Baobab will be a great, and reasonably priced, gift book for the Christmas season.