A book for apprentice falconers wanting to know the basics of becoming a falconer. Shows a step-by-step approach to training your first wild caught hawk.

    Containing the renowned artist's superbly lucid and comprehensive text, this guide features more than 6,500 of his detailed paintings. Full color.

    In the process, he takes us on a journey into the wild and the tame, the beautiful and the fragile.Over the course of a full nesting season, Gessner immerses himself in the lives of these majestic birds. He observes their remarkable adaptability, their astonishing fish-catching skills, their housekeeping habits, and, when the chicks are born, both their savage and gentle ways of nurturing. For Gessner, spotting an osprey dive for fish at forty miles an hour becomes a lesson in patience and focus, watching the birds build their nests illustrates the vital task of making a home, and following the chicks' attempts to fly show him the value of letting go. He discovers the rewards of slowing down and the discipline of waiting and watching. And he witnesses an extraordinary event: the survival of ten young ospreys, the most his Cape Cod neighborhood has seen in more than half a century.Return of the Osprey is a story of a remarkable recovery, a celebration of place, and a thoughtful meditation on finding one's way in the world.

    Featuring 50 common North American birds, such as the White-Breasted Butt Nugget and the Goddamned Canada Goose (or White-Breasted Nuthatch and Canada Goose for the layperson), Matt Kracht identifies all the idiots in your backyard and details exactly why they suck with ink drawings. Each entry is accompanied by facts about a bird's (annoying) call, its (dumb) migratory pattern, its (downright tacky) markings, and more.The essential guide to all things wings with migratory maps, tips for birding, musings on the avian population, and the ethics of birdwatching.

    More an encyclopedia than a field guide, National Geographic's Complete Birds is a browsable treasure trove of facts. This comprehensive volume profiles every bird observable in the continental United States and Canada, featuring species accounts with details that include calls and songs, breeding behaviors, molting patterns, and the vast extent of their polar and neotropical migrations. The precision maps, illuminating photographs, and more than 4,000 exquisite pieces of annotated art make this the biggest and best bird book ever.This third edition, thoroughly updated, includes:Information on more than 1,000 species and subspeciesOverviews of every familyOrganization reflecting current taxonomy850 range maps, more than half updated since the last editionSidebars on identification challenges such as distinguishing between Bay-breasted and Blackpoll Warblers in fall or separating the various species of white egretsThese 752 pages add up to a lifetime of learning for all devoted birders, from those just beginning birders to those who have been building their life lists for decades. Bird lovers will appreciate many other titles from National Geographic, including:Field Guide to the Birds of North AmericaBackyard Guide to the Birds of North AmericaHow to Know the Birds Birds of the Photo Ark

    You'll find: * All the identification information on a single page-color photographs, range map, and detailed description. No more fumbling to match photos with text! * For fast reference-a compact alphabetical index inside the front and back covers. * More than 900 high-resolution color identification photographs. * An illustrated Quick Guide to the most common backyard and feeder birds. * Convenient colored tabs keyed to each bird group. * Concise and comprehensive text, with information on habitat; plumage variation; feeding, nesting, and mating behavior; bird feeder proclivity; and-for the first time in any guide-population trends and conservation status.

    This new book combines the Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Birds and Peterson Field Guide to Western Birds into one volume, filled with accessible, concise information and including almost three hours of video podcasts to make bird watching even easier.• 40 new paintings• Digital updates to Peterson’s original paintings, reflecting the latest knowledge of bird identification• All new maps for the most up-to-date range information available• Text rewritten to cover the U.S. and Canada in one guide• Larger trim size accommodates range maps on every spread• Contributors include: Michael DiGiorgio, Jeff Gordon, Paul Lehman, Michael O’Brien, Larry Rosche, and Bill Thompson III• Includes URL to register for access to video podcasts

    Each portrait includes full-color original artwork; details on identification, habitat, nesting, and food; and a color-coded range map.

    Its pages contain 1,200 colour illustrations, plus seven comparison spreads, with comprehensive text on identification, habitats, food, breeding and conservation, and accurate range maps. In addition, the epub edition features songs, calls and other sounds from each species, making this the ultimate one-stop resources for anyone interested in identifying and learning more about the birds they see.This collection of images and sounds represents a step change in the way birdwatchers operate. No more carrying heavy books into the field; no more trying to remember sounds days later, while all other methods for taking sounds into the field are consigned to the dustbin.The RSPB Handbook of British Birds e-book provides a complete field-based ID solution – no birdwatcher will want to be without it.(Note: Audio may not play on all devices. Please check your user manual for details).

    Cowan shares her experiences running a world-famous falconry school, and the lessons she's learned from her birds. From retrieving her falcon from the local police lock up, to finding her husband in bed with a gyrfalcon, to a heart-breaking race to save her young peregrine from attack by a wild hawk, Cowan's life is a constant, ever-changing adventure. Cowan's birds have immersed her so much into their world that she has found herself courted by a Goshawk and bossed about by a Harris Hawk. The book carries her readers along, so they, too, meet hawks and falcons in ways they never imagined possible.

    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.

    Experienced birders use the most easily observed and consistent characteristics--size, shape, behavior, probability, and general color patterns. The book's 101 scenes--including thirty-five double-page layouts--provide a complete picture of how these features are all related. Even the effects of lighting and other real-world conditions are illustrated and explained. Detailed and succinct accounts from two of North America's foremost raptor experts, Jerry Liguori and Brian Sullivan, stress the key identification features. This complete picture allows everyone from beginner to expert to understand and enjoy what he or she sees in the field. The mystique of bird identification is eliminated, allowing even novice birders to identify raptors quickly and simply.Comprehensive and authoritative, the book covers all thirty-four of North America's diurnal raptor species (all species except owls). Each species is featured in stunning color plates that show males and females, in a full spectrum of ages and color variants, depicted near and far, in flight and at rest, and from multiple angles, all caught in their typical habitats. There are also comparative, multispecies scenes and mystery photographs that allow readers to test their identification skills, along with answers and full explanations in the back of the book. In addition, the book features an introduction, and thirty-four color maps accompany the plates.Whether you are a novice or an expert, this one-of-a-kind guide will show you an entirely new way to look at these spectacular birds.The most complete guide to North American raptors, written by some of the foremost experts The first raptor guide using Richard Crossley's acclaimed, innovative composite images that show birds as they actually appear in the field 101 stunning color plates--including thirty-five double-page layouts--composed from thousands of photographs Comparative, multispecies plates and photos of mystery species that allow readers to test their growing identification skills Complete with introduction, 34 color maps, and detailed species accounts

    Tao is a Chinese word meaning way or path. The Tao of Mom, then, is literally The Way of Mothers. Many of the women celebrated in The Tao of Mom are well-known, while some are not; many hail from the West, yet all impart distinctly Eastern sensibilities. To further enrich our journey into the thoughts of each motherly figure, background details are included about each woman, such as Rosa Parks, mother of the modern civil rights movement; Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the democratic movement in Myanmar; Maria Montessori, Italian educational reformer; and Abhirupa-Nanda, Indian poet-to name only a few.Lavishly illustrated, this gem of a book is for you to give to the moms in your life, for moms to give to you, for everyone to give to dads (as a loving reminder of how wise moms can be), and of course for you to give to yourself. The Tao of Mom is for everyone in need of a daily dose of motherly wisdom, inspiration, and comfort.

    Children are interested in things like where do certain animal come from and where does the rain come from. Children are also interested in the sky and how far away it is from the ground. Nature will also teach children how animals and insects get their food. This will force children to paint a picture of this in their mind. This picture will become real to children of all ages.

    Accompanying every species entry is a distribution map and illustrations showing the species in all the major plumages (male, female, immature, in flight, at rest, feeding: whatever is important).In addition, each group of birds includes an introduction which covers the major problems involved in identifying or observing them: how to organise a sea watching trip, how to separate birds of prey in flight, which duck hybrids can be confused with which main species. These and many other common birdwatching questions are answered.The combination of definitive text, up-to-date distribution maps and superb illustrations, all in a single volume, makes this book the ultimate field guide, essential on every bookshelf and birdwatching trip.