Book picks similar to
The Atlas of Birds: Diversity, Behavior, and Conservation by Mike Unwin
birds
non-fiction
animals
nature
Puppy Training in 7 Easy Steps: Everything You Need to Know to Raise the Perfect Dog
Zoom Room Dog Training - 2019
Don’t panic—slowly remove the shoe from your pup’s mouth and open this book, because it’s time to start successfully training.Puppy Training in 7 Easy Steps is a practical, step-by-step guide to guarantee that your cute and curious friend stays cute. From puppy proofing your home to mastering need-to-know commands, this fool-proof training manual sets you and your canine companion up for a lifetime of positively reinforced obedience and tail-wagging fun!In this dog training book, you’ll find:
Puppy Prep—Stock up on all of the supplies you need to start training with helpful checklists and insider tips.
Dog Training in 7-Steps—This includes bringing your puppy home, crate training, potty training, preventing food aggression, socializing your puppy, the six key commands, leash walking and coming when called.
Troubleshooting Tips—Get quick advice to make sure your dog training goes according to plan, no matter how many squirrels, birds, or other temptations catch your pup’s attention.
Sit. Stay. Heel. Fetch. This no-nonsense guide to dog training will teach you and your pup how to do it all in just 7 easy steps.
My Robin
Frances Hodgson Burnett - 2008
In response to a reader's letter, Burnett reminisces about her love of English robins -- and one in particular that changed her life forever.
The Life of the Skies
Jonathan Rosen - 2008
As a boy, Teddy Roosevelt learned taxidermy from a man who had sailed up the Missouri River with Audubon, and yet as president presided over America's entry into the twentieth century, in which our ability to destroy ourselves and the natural world was no longer metaphorical. Roosevelt, an avid birder, was born a hunter and died a conservationist.Today, forty-six million Americans are bird-watchers. The Life of the Skies is a genre-bending journey into the meaning of a pursuit born out of the tangled history of industrialization and nature longing. Jonathan Rosen set out on a quest not merely to see birds but to fathom their centrality—historical and literary, spiritual and scientific—to a culture torn between the desire both to conquer and to conserve.Rosen argues that bird-watching is nothing less than the real national pastime—indeed it is more than that, because the field of play is the earth itself. We are the players and the spectators, and the outcome—since bird and watcher are intimately connected—is literally a matter of life and death.
The Story of Life in 25 Fossils: Tales of Intrepid Fossil Hunters and the Wonders of Evolution
Donald R. Prothero - 2015
Best-selling paleontology author Donald R. Prothero describes twenty-five famous, beautifully preserved fossils in a gripping scientific history of life on Earth. Recounting the adventures behind the discovery of these objects and fully interpreting their significance within the larger fossil record, Prothero creates a riveting history of life on our planet.The twenty-five fossils portrayed in this book catch animals in their evolutionary splendor as they transition from one kind of organism to another. We witness extinct plants and animals of microscopic and immense size and thrilling diversity. We learn about fantastic land and sea creatures that have no match in nature today. Along the way, we encounter such fascinating fossils as the earliest trilobite, Olenellus; the giant shark Carcharocles; the "fishibian" Tiktaalik; the "Frogamander" and the "Turtle on the Half-Shell"; enormous marine reptiles and the biggest dinosaurs known; the first bird, Archaeopteryx; the walking whale Ambulocetus; the gigantic hornless rhinoceros Paraceratherium, the largest land mammal that ever lived; and the Australopithecus nicknamed "Lucy," the oldest human skeleton. We meet the scientists and adventurers who pioneered paleontology and learn about the larger intellectual and social contexts in which their discoveries were made. Finally, we find out where to see these splendid fossils in the world's great museums.Ideal for all who love prehistoric landscapes and delight in the history of science, this book makes a treasured addition to any bookshelf, stoking curiosity in the evolution of life on Earth.
Darwin's Odyssey: The Voyage of the Beagle (Kindle Single)
Kevin Jackson - 2013
For five years in his mid-twenties, he sailed on the BEAGLE around the world, exploring jungles, climbing mountains, trekking across deserts. With every new landfall, he had new adventures: he rode through bandit country, was thrown into jail by revolutionaries, took part in an armed raid with marines, survived two earthquakes, hunted and fished. He suffered the terrible cold and rain of Tierra del Fuego, the merciless heat of the Australian outback and the inner pangs of heartbreak. He also made the discoveries that finally led him to formulate his theory of Natural Selection as the driving force of evolution. The five-year voyage of the BEAGLE was the basis for all Darwin's later work; but it also turned him from a friendly idler into the greatest scientist of his century. Kevin Jackson is a writer, broadcaster and film-maker. His most recent book is Constellation of Genius: 1922 and All That Jazz (Farrar Strauss Giroux, 2013). He lives in Cambridge, England.
The Forever Fix: Gene Therapy and the Boy Who Saved It
Ricki Lewis - 2012
Like something from a science fiction novel, doctors carefully injected viruses bearing healing genes into the DNA of Corey's eyes a few days later, Corey could see, his sight restored by gene therapy.THE FOREVER FIX is the first book to tell the fascinating story of gene therapy: how it works, the science behind it, how patients (mostly children) have been helped and harmed, and how scientists learned from each trial to get one step closer to its immense promise, the promise of a "forever fix," - a cure that, by fixing problems at their genetic root, does not need further surgery or medication.Told through the voices of the children and families who have been the inspiration, experimental subjects, and successes of genetic science, THE FOREVER FIX is compelling and engaging narrative science that tells explores the future of medicine as well as the families and scientists who are breaking new ground every day."
Songbird Journeys: Four Seasons in the Lives of Migratory Birds
Miyoko Chu - 2006
Now scientists have documented mass migrations over the Gulf of Mexico, identified the voices of migrants in the night sky, and showed how songbirds navigate using stars, polarized light, and magnetic fields. Miyoko Chu explores the intricacies underlying the ebb and flow of migration, the cycle of seasons, and the interconnectedness between distant places. Songbird Journeys pays homage to the wonder and beauty of songbirds while revealing the remarkable lives of migratory birds and the scientific quest to answer age-old questions about where songbirds go, how they get there, and what they do in the far-flung places they inhabit throughout the year.
Rat Island: Predators in Paradise and the World's Greatest Wildlife Rescue
William Stolzenburg - 2011
Once a remote sanctuary for enormous flocks of seabirds, the island gained a new name when shipwrecked rats colonized, savaging the nesting birds by the thousands. Now, on this and hundreds of other remote islands around the world, a massive-and massively controversial-wildlife rescue mission is under way.Islands, making up just 3 percent of Earth's landmass, harbor more than half of its endangered species. These fragile ecosystems, home to unique species that evolved in peaceful isolation, have been catastrophically disrupted by mainland predators-rats, cats, goats, and pigs ferried by humans to islands around the globe. To save these endangered islanders, academic ecologists have teamed up with professional hunters and semiretired poachers in a radical act of conservation now bent on annihilating the invaders. Sharpshooters are sniping at goat herds from helicopters. Biological SWAT teams are blanketing mountainous isles with rat poison. Rat Island reveals a little-known and much-debated side of today's conservation movement, founded on a cruel-to-be-kind philosophy.Touring exotic locales with a ragtag group of environmental fighters, William Stolzenburg delivers both perilous adventure and intimate portraits of human, beast, hero, and villain. And amid manifold threats to life on Earth, he reveals a new reason to hope.
The Shorebird Guide
Michael O'Brien - 2006
Experienced birders use the most easily observed characteristics — size, structure, behavior, and general color patterns — to identify birds even before looking carefully at plumage details. Now birders at all levels can learn how to identify shorebirds quickly and simply. This guide includes more than 870 stunning color photographs, starting with a general impression of the species and progressing to more detailed images of the bird throughout its life cycle. Quiz questions in the captions will engage and challenge all birders and help them benefit from this simplified, commonsense approach to identification.
The Grail Bird: Hot on the Trail of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker
Tim Gallagher - 2005
But every time they think they've finally closed the door, the bird makes an unexpected appearance. It happened in the 1920s, and it’s happened in almost every subsequent decade. For more than 60 years, each sighting has been met with ridicule and scorn. Respected researchers and naturalists have been branded as quacks just for having the temerity to say that the ivory-bill still exists. Yet the reports still trickle in. Is there any truth to these sightings, or are they just a case of wishful thinking, misidentification, or outright fabrication? To unravel the mystery, author Tim Gallagher heads south, deep into the eerie swamps and bayous of the vast Mississippi Delta, searching for people who claim to have seen this rarest of birds and following up—sometimes more than 30 years after the fact—on their sightings. He meets a colorful array of characters: a cigar-chomping ex-boxer who took two controversial pictures of an alleged ivory-bill in 1971; a former corporate lawyer who abandoned her career to search for ivory-bills full time; two men who grew up in the ivory-bill’s last known stronghold in a final remnant of primeval forest in Louisiana. With his buddy Bobby Harrison, a true son of the South from Alabama, Gallagher hits the swamps, wading through hip-deep, boot-sucking mud and canoeing through turgid, mud brown bayous where deadly cottonmouth water moccasins abound. In most cases, they are clearly decades too late. But when the two speak to an Arkansas backwoods kayaker who saw a mystery woodpecker the week before and has a description of the bird that is too good to be a fantasy, the hunt is on. Their Eureka moment comes a few days later as a huge woodpecker flies in front of their canoe, and they both cry out, “Ivory-bill!” This sighting—the first time since 1944 that two qualified observers positively identify an ivory-billed woodpecker in the United States—quickly leads to the largest search ever launched to find a rare bird, as researchers fan out across the bayou, hoping to document the existence of this most iconic of birds.
The Tapir's Morning Bath: Mysteries of the Tropical Rain Forest and the Scientists Who Are Trying to Solve Them
Elizabeth Royte - 2001
Journalist Elizabeth Royte weaves together her own adventures on Barro Colorado with tales of researchers struggling to parse the intricate workings of a tropical rain forest. As Royte works alongside the scientists � sorting insects, collecting monkey dung, radiotracking fruit bats � she asks: What is the point of such research? Both "moving and satisfying" (Providence Sunday Journal), The Tapir's Morning Bath humanizes the scientists, who are driven by passion and ambition to explore arcane questions even though the world may not have time to wait for the answers.
A Cat is Watching: A Look at the Way Cats See Us
Roger A. Caras - 1990
Cat lovers will be enthralled with his insights into the feline world, from the secret of catnip to the true meaning of a purr. Exploring the mysteries of animal communication, Caras explains cat vocabulary (nine consonants, five vowels) and the incredible phenomenon of psi-trailing, a cat's ability to find its way home after being transported several miles away. Filled with charming stories about the felines in his own life, the author helps us see wild and domestic cats for the remarkable creatures they are. The New York Times Book Review called this work, "As thorough and sensitive a tour of the cat's world as a human being can contrive".
The Golden Shore: California's Love Affair with the Sea
David Helvarg - 2013
Author David Helvarg takes the reader on both a geographic and literary journey along the 1,100-mile Pacific coastline, from the Oregon border to the San Diego/Tijuana international border fence and out into its whale-, seal-, and shark-rich offshore seamounts, rock isles, and kelp forests.Part history, part travelogue, part love letter, The Golden Shore tells the story of California’s majestic coastline and ocean. Helvarg captures the spirit of the Californian coast, its mythic place in American culture, and its role in a state whose ongoing natural disasters and unremitting sense of renewal are intimately linked to its deep connection with an ever-changing sea.
Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book
Bill Oddie - 1982
He's been a bird-watcher for over thirty years. He's probably the only person ho could have written this book. Only he combines the inside knowledge with the tactlessness and lack of decency required to spill the beans. The misery, the scandal, the heartbreak of bird-watching - it's all in BILL ODDIE'S LITTLE BLACK BIRD BOOK.
Emerson: The Ultimate Collection
Ralph Waldo Emerson - 1994
He was seen as a champion of individualism. The transcendentalists believe in the inherent goodness of both people and nature. They further believe that society and its institutions—particularly organized religion and political parties—corrupt the purity of the individual. They have faith that people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first, then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays – Essays: First Series and Essays: Second Series, published respectively in 1841 and 1844 – represent the core of his thinking, and include such well-known essays as Self-Reliance, The Over-Soul, Circles, The Poet and Experience. Together with Nature, these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period. The collection: • Nature • The American Scholar • The Conduct of Life • English Traits Essays - First Series • History • Self-Reliance • Compensation • Spiritual Laws • Love • Friendship • Prudence • Heroism • The Over-Soul • Circles • Intellect • Art Essays - Second Series • The Poet • Experience • Character • Manners • Gifts • Nature • Politics • Nonimalist and Realist • New England Reformers Representative Men • Plato; or, the Philosopher • Plato; New Readings • Swedenborg; or, the Mystic • Montaigne; or, the Skeptic • Shakspeare; or, the Poet • Napoleon; or, the Man of the World • Goethe; or, the Writer Poems • May-Day And Other Pieces • Elements And Mottoes • Quatrains And Translations