It's a story written especially for moms who get discouraged and feel like giving up on homeschooling, as well as a guide to nature study. It's written as the diary of one mother's year of teaching her children at home. In it she pours out her hopes, disappointments, and joy. In the course of caring for her many responsibilities, she is frequently ... Full description

    The lightest birds in the sky, hummingbirds are capable of incredible feats, such as flying backwards, diving at speeds of sixty-one MPH, and beating their wings more than sixty times a second. Miraculous creatures, they are also incredibly vulnerable when they first emerge from their eggs. That’s where Brenda Sherburn comes in.With tenderness and patience, she rescues abandoned hummingbirds and nurses them back to health until they can fly away and live in the wild. In The Hummingbird’s Gift, the care that Brenda provides her peanut-sized patients is revealed and, in the process, shows us just how truly amazing hummingbirds are.

    57 full-color photographs; 10 black-and-white drawings.

    . . Young Tom French was found dead, lying in a marsh on the Norfolk coast, with his head bashed in and his binoculars still around his neck. One of the best birders in England, Tom had put the village of Rushy on the birdwatching map. Everyone liked him. Or did they? George Palmer-Jones, an elderly birdwatcher who decided quietly to look into the brutal crime, discovered mixed feelings aplenty. Still, he remained baffled by a deed that could have been motivated by thwarted love, pure envy, or something else altogether. But as he and his fellow “twitchers” flocked from Norfolk to Scotland to the Scilly Isles, in response to rumours of rare sightings, George—with help from his lovely wife, Molly—gradually discerned the true markings of a killer. All he had to do was prove it . . . before the murderer strikes again.

    For these beginning and intermediate enthusiasts, National Geographic Birding Essentials is a must. Comprehensive and authoritative, yet engaging and user-friendly, it teaches readers how to begin and improve their birding... what to look and listen for... and how to make sense of what they see and hear. A unique visual component shows actual field guide pages and how to read them, while another compares the same bird in photography versus artwork and explains how to use both for species identification. National Geographic's quality photography is a major highlight of the book, supplemented by pencil drawings and full-color maps to give the novice and intermediate birder a full range of visual information.Field Ornithologists Jonathan Alderfer and Jon Dunn have crafted a masterful guide, striking just the right balance of practical information and reader-friendly tone. Chapters discuss the pleasures of birding, equipment needed, how to read range maps, birds' physical features, how to identify birds, identification challenges, bird classification and suggested books and journals for building a fine birding library.National Geographic has established a stellar reputation among birders with our blockbuster Field Guide to the Birds of North America. The tradition continues as we serve an entry-level market that continually needs the helpful, up-to-the-minute information found in National Geographic Birding Essentials.

    From the forty-below nights of a brutal Minnesota winter to a sweltering summer which brings a surprise tornado, she battles predators, bad luck, and the uncertainty of a future that may not look anything like the one she always imagined. This book is a meditation on life and longing.

    That's the message of David Lindo, a.k.a. the Urban Birder. Whether the reader is at home, in the park, traveling to work, or just looking out a window, the opportunities are always there. This inspirational guide to birding in our cities recounts Lindo's personal journey of discovery, and includes entertaining stories of encounters with human as well as avian city dwellers around the world.

    White, the author of The Once and Future King and Mistress Masham's Repose, was a young writer who found himself rifling through old handbooks of falconry. A particular sentence — "the bird reverted to a feral state" — seized his imagination, and, White later wrote, "A longing came to my mind that I should be able to do this myself. The word 'feral' has a kind of magical potency which allied itself to two other words, 'ferocious' and 'free.'" Immediately, White wrote to Germany to acquire a young goshawk. Gos, as White named the bird, was ferocious and Gos was free, and White had no idea how to break him in beyond the ancient (and, though he did not know it, long superseded) practice of depriving him of sleep, which meant that he, White, also went without rest. Slowly man and bird entered a state of delirium and intoxication, of attraction and repulsion that looks very much like love. White kept a daybook describing his volatile relationship with Gos — at once a tale of obsession, a comedy of errors, and a hymn to the hawk. It was this that became The Goshawk, one of modern literature's most memorable and surprising encounters with the wilderness — as it exists both within us and without.

    It was walking that first caused rifts between us in my sulky teenage years, and walking that brought us back together later on; and this ‘ghost’ of Dad has been walking at my elbow since his death, as I have ruminated on his great love of walking, his prodigious need to do it – and how and why I walk myself.”The January Man is set over one calendar year as, month by month, region by region, Christopher Somerville walks the routes that remind him of his father. As he travels the country – from the River Severn to the Lake District, the Norfolk Coast to the Isle of Foula off the west coast of Shetland – he describes the history, wildlife, landscapes and people he passes, down back lanes and old paths, in rain and fair-weather.This exquisitely written account of the British countryside both inspires us to don our boots and explore the 140,000 miles of footpaths across the British Isles, but also illustrates how, on long-distance walks, we can come to an understanding of ourselves and our fellow walkers. Over the hills and along they by-ways, Christopher Somerville finally finds the man behind his father’s modest, buttoned-up, wartime facade.

    Each autumn they migrate south, to Delaware, California and the Gulf of Mexico. In the spring they fly north again. William Fiennes decided to go with them and to write about his travels.

    An avid birdwatcher, Ian explores his life in Hollywood through the lens of his favorite pastime in this collection of personal stories. Featuring humorous and adventurous stories about his career, family, and love life, in addition to never-before-published photographs, Odd Birds is a must-read for fans of his hit show, nature enthusiasts, and lovers of celebrity memoir alike.

     Join him for some laugh-out-loud moments as he island-hops across Indonesia. From Sumbawa’s Mount Tambora, the home of the largest eruption in human history, to Krakatoa, the creator of the loudest sound ever heard by modern man, Gordon works his way across the country, taking in some of the most remarkable, beautiful and downright scary places on Earth.

    But then a poacher turns up dead in the Pickett's backyard. How did the dead man get to his house? What was in the empty cooler by his side? And why do his colleagues want to sweep the case under the rug? Battling grudge-holding neighbours, corrupt officials and out-of-town activists, Joe begins to unravel a mystery that threatens both his life and the family he loves. Savage Run Game warden Joe Pickett is called to a bizarre crime scene deep within the forests of Twelve Sleep County, Wyoming. Famous eco-activist Stewie Woods has been blown up in an explosion, along with his new bride and ten head of cattle. With two unlikely allies at his side, and two hired killers on his heels, Joe can't avoid the legendary Savage Run - a treacherous, isolated canyon with no crossing...Winterkill It's an hour away from darkness, a bitter winter storm is raging, and Joe Pickett is deep in the forest edging Battle Mountain, shotgun in his left hand, his truck's steering wheel handcuffed to his right - and Lamar Gardiner's arrow-riddled corpse splayed against the tree in front of him. Lamar's murder and the sudden onslaught of the snowstorm warn: Get off the mountain. But Joe knows this episode is far from over. And when his own daughter gets caught up in his hunt for the killer, Joe will stop at nothing to get her back...Trophy Hunt Local authorities are quick to label a rash of animal mutilations as the work of a grizzly bear, but Joe Pickett suspects that something far more sinister is afoot. And when the bodies of two men are found disfigured in the same way, his worst fears are confirmed: A modern-day Jack the Ripper is on the loose - and the killings have just begun. Out of Range A good friend, and fellow game warden, has killed himself, and Joe Pickett's been chosen to temporarily run his district. But Jackson, Wyoming, is a far cry from Joe's - and it doesn't help that Joe feels compelled to investigate the circumstances surrounding his friend's suicide. But as he comes closer to the truth, the more his own life spirals out of control - and he realizes that if he isn't careful, he may be Jackson's next victim... In Plain Sight Local ranch owner and matriarch Opal Scarlett has vanished under suspicious circumstances during a bitter struggle between her sons for control of her million-dollar empire. Joe Pickett is convinced one of them must have done her in. But when he becomes the victim of a series of wicked and increasingly violent pranks, Joe wonders if what's happening has less to do with Opal's disappearance than with the darkest chapters of his own past. Whoever is after him has a vicious debt to collect, and wants Joe to pay...and pay dearly.

    I want to find out how they behave when they're freeLen Howard was forty years old when she decided to leave her London life and loves behind, retire to the English countryside and devote the rest of her days to her one true passion: birds.Moving to a small cottage in Sussex, she wrote two bestselling books, astonishing the world with her observations on the tits, robins, sparrows and other birds that lived nearby, flew freely in and out of her windows, and would even perch on her shoulder as she typed.This moving novel imagines the story of this remarkable woman's decision to defy society's expectations, and the joy she drew from her extraordinary relationship with the natural world.

    So Stephen Rutt found when he moved to Dumfries in the autumn of 2018, coinciding with the migration of thousands of pink-footed geese who spend their winter in the Firth.Thus begins an extraordinary odyssey. From his new surroundings in the north to the wide open spaces of his childhood home in the south, Stephen traces the lives and habits of the most common species of goose in the UK and explores the place they have in our culture, our history and, occasionally, on our festive table.Wintering takes you on a vivid tour of the in-between landscapes the geese inhabit, celebrating the short days, varied weathers and long nights of the season during which we share our home with these large, startling, garrulous and cooperative birds.