Product Description
This book provides the first comprehensive account of the biology of one of North America's most enigmatic and colorful wildlife species, the Carolina Parakeet. The only parrot endemic to the United States, this species once ranged in large, noisy flocks from Florida to New York, and as far west as Colorado. But although it was still widespread and common during the time of John James Audubon (whose illustration of the species is perhaps his finest work), the parakeet was gone completely by the mid-twentieth century.

Through analyses of historical accounts and presentation of considerable new information gleaned from interviewing senior citizens with firsthand knowledge of the species, Noel Snyder develops an intriguing portrait of the parakeet that challenges long-held assumptions.

Although it has long been believed that the Carolina Parakeet was exterminated largely by shooting, Snyder argues that exotic diseases may have figured more heavily in its final disappearance. He also presents evidence that the parakeet lasted far longer into the twentieth century than generally believed, and that it may have been toxic and distasteful to predators by virtue of its frequent consumption of the cocklebur--a plant highly poisonous to many other vertebrates. Snyder proposes avenues of research that could help resolve some of the enduring mysteries about this fascinating bird, and he discusses the significance of its extinction for wildlife conservation in general. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

An interesting read
It has been two years or so since I read the book so my mindset is not fresh.However, I found this book to be interesting and well worth reading if you have an interest in Carolina Parakeet.Snyder presents details about the bird's Florida range and postulates that the species may have been present into the 1930's.I found the information fascinating and worth considering.

Best historical review
Snyder does a superb job of presenting the historical status of a species now extinct.He located much reference literature never before discussed or published.In the case of this species, now certainly extinct, Snyder portrays how the arrogance of certain men may have eliminated any chance of saving the species.Great library reference for any avian biologist.

Uninspired writing
This book was a disappointment.I'm very interested in the topic but much of the book reads like a scientific paper.There is a lot of good, interesting information but, unless you're particularly interested in Carolina parakeets, as I am, suffering through the writing is probably not worth it.

The crux of the book is his postulation that the parakeets diet of cockleburs made them toxic to most predators thus their bright feathers, gregariousness and ability to "sleep" at night.These abilities were no match against humans who killed them with ease.One shot took out droves and then the survivors would gather around the fallen, making shooting the rest even easier.

Because cockleburs grow around human dwellings the parakeet was drawn to areas where they came in contact with livestock and other sources of exotic diseases, conceivably nail in the coffin for the parakeet.

... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

ornithology made simple
Faaborg's textbook for ornithology was published in 1988.It is composed of 16 chapters for a total of 470 pages, and deals with topics from an introductory chapter to conservation and management.A the time of its publication, nothing original had been published since Pettingill's classic ornithology texts (>25 yr old) and it sure was a significant change from the previous approach.

The subtitle of the book, "an ecological approach" informs the reader about the scope of the contents.Although morphological, anatomical, and physiological chapters are included (co-authored by S. Chaplin), these are not the main emphasis of this volume, but a more organismal-to-community ecology type of book, and being Faaborg direct offspring of the MacArthurian paradigm this was expected.

Students using this book in undergraduate ornithology courses will find an easy to digest narrative, abundant and easily understandable figures and tables, and a body of information with direct applications to conservation and management, besides its children-proof binding.When compared to similar recent ornithology books (e.g. F. Gill's) it is pretty obvious the professional ornithologist will chose the more in-depth, recent and abundantly researched volume of the later, but for people looking for an excellent introductory level ornithology textbook the objectives of the author are more than fulfilled.

It is a shame it can be so expensive in the used book market and that the author and publisher haven't put produced a second edition, perhaps with a lower-priced paperback section. ... Read more

Product Description
Host to a large and diverse bird population as well as a long human history, Virginia is arguably the birthplace of ornithology in North America. David W. Johnston¹s History of Ornithology in Virginia, the result of over a decade of research, is the first book to address this fascinating element of the state¹s natural history.

Tertiary-era fossils show that birds inhabited Virginia as early as 65 million years ago. Their first human observers were the region¹s many Indian tribes and, later, colonists on Roanoke Island and in Jamestown. Explorers pushing westward contributed further to the development of a conception of birds that was distinctively American.

By the 1900s planter-farmers, naturalists, and government employees had amassed bird records from the Barrier Islands and the Dismal Swamp to the Blue Ridge and Appalachian Mountains. The modern era saw the emergence of ornithological organizations and game laws, as well as increasingly advanced studies of bird distribution, migration pathways, and breeding biology. Johnston shows us how ornithology in Virginia evolved from observations of wondrous creatures to a sophisticated science recognizing some 435 avian species. ... Read more

Product Description
Climatic change has a profound effect on the distribution of animals and plants. for instance, between 1850 and 1950, a period of climatic amelioration, Britain gained several new species from southern and eastern Europe, including Collared Dove, Celti's Warbler, Savi's Warbler, Firecrest and Golden Oriole. The situation has been further complicated by the "greenhouse effect", with northern and southern species "invading" Britain. This study traces and explains the changes in bird distribution in the Northern Hemisphere, with special reference to Britain and Europe, relating them not only to climatic change, but also to other environmental factors. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

INFO...
Climatic change has a profound effect on the distribution of animals and plants. for instance, between 1850 and 1950, a period of climatic amelioration, Britain gained several new species from southern and eastern Europe, including Collared Dove, Celti's Warbler, Savi's Warbler, Firecrest and Golden Oriole. The situation has been further complicated by the "greenhouse effect", with northern and southern species "invading" Britain. This study traces and explains the changes in bird distribution in the Northern Hemisphere, with special reference to Britain and Europe, relating them not only to climatic change, but also to other environmental factors. ... Read more

Product Description
Publisher: [S.l. : s.n.Publication date: 1880Subjects: BirdsNotes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be numerous typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an OCR edition without illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from GeneralBooksClub.com. You can also preview excerpts from the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Original Published by: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts in 1861 in 464 pages; Subjects: Natural history; Birds; Biography & Autobiography / Science & Technology; Nature / General; Nature / Birds & Birdwatching; Nature / Essays; Nature / Reference; Science / Life Sciences / Zoology / General; ... Read more

Product Description
The Bird Songs Anthology combines the most stunning species from Bird Songs: 250 North American Birds in Song and Bird Songs from Around the World into a unique special edition.In collaboration with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's aclaimed Macauley Library, The Bird Songs Anthology showcases the sounds of 100 North American birds and 100 species found in Europe, South America, Africa, Asia, and Australasia. Bird biologist and author Les Beletsky's consice, authoritative accounts detail species' characteristic habits, emphasizing their distinct vocalizations. Crisp, vibrant illustrations of each bird and lavishly printed habitatscenes at the beginning of each chapter complete this remarkable volume.Containing the latest scientific information, gorgeous original illustrations, and rare songs from the most captivating birds on earth. The Bird Songs Anthology is a treasury for birders all over the globe ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

amusing to the cats, useless to the humans
I'm glad the above reviewer liked the book, but I couldn't disagree more. Since it was remaindered at Borders for $10, I bought one. I live in a natural area on the MD/PA border surrounded by dozens species of birds and have always wanted to identify them vocally. Not with this! If you check the contents, you'll see that that not many common species appear though plenty of parrots and so on (and I'm talking about the American section here). Not only that, but one short vocalization is given for each when the reality is a LOT more complex than that. The descriptive information on the species is very superficial. It was not intended for serious birders, I hope.

I went on to purchase the "Smithsonian Field Guide to the Birds with 587 DVD Birdsongs". In addition to having a much larger selection of vocalizations it is a very good field guide as well, in the Peterson tradition. So you wouldn't really need another book. It cost $20! The project of identifying birds by listening to the songs is not easy, it turns out. Fieldwork would seem to be the only sure way to success.

The upside is that pushing the button and playing the songs really pricks up the cats' ears and makes them look around. But I didn't get $10 worth of kicks from that, even.

Becoming a birder
So you want to become a birder? In my case I would like to join my mother and sister in their, to me, amazing store of knowledge about birds and their songs. One day the three of us were sitting on my patio, overlooking the bayou when I heard a particular bird. "That's a red-headed woodpecker." They wanted to know, How do you know? "Because a pair live in that tree and I see them all the time." Sure enough, they saw the male. I had heard the song of a bird they didn't know and a fairly common one. That is the point of birding--to see and learn a new bird.

"The Bird Songs Anthology" is an excellent way to learn to recognize the physical description and the songs of 200 birds. These songs came from the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which maintains over 160,000 natural sounds of birds, including sixty-seven percent of the world's birds.

Compiled into this book are sounds of birds from six of seven continents (not enough species in Antartica), with major representative birds from each continent and then those that are "especially striking, attractive, or rare" (8). In addition to teaching birders, the book also encourages and promotes conservation of natural habitats. By teaching sight and sound of each bird, the book is promoting familiarity. With familiarity comes the need to protect and so on.

North America is the first continent shown and the edges of the pages are color-coded red. As you read the left page of description, habitat, migration, song type, you can study the images of male and female on the right. There is a strip of mechanism to the far right and is an extension of the book format. Press the middle button and listen to the song, which plays twice. The songs do not advance unless you press the button.

The first bird is the Common Loon. Oh my, what a haunting melody. Wah, whooooooooooooUhhh. Wah, whooooooooUhhhhh. The first time I went through the book, my three-year-old niece operated the mechanism and was fascinated with the bird songs, listening to half before her attention went elsewhere. Note: some of the birds have just one page each.

The second bird is the Horned Grebe. What if I close the book at this point and leave it? Where will I be when I return? The digital face goes blank if left unattended and automatically returns to zero. Each bird is numbered on the left page, so you can always locate the number on the digital face by pressing another button to go up or down.

At some point something was accidentally placed on top of the button, causing the battery to die. I thought, Uh oh, how will I ever match the bird with the song? That is when I discovered how the unit works. It starts back with one, that is, the correct "one." I suppose that is why the book is called a Collector's Edition.

Listening to these songs and studying the corresponding birds is a relaxing pastime, one to pursue in one's leisure and as many birds as the armchair birder chooses. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

Delightful history of science
History of science can be fun--this is a thoroughly enjoyable book.Tim Birkhead is a fine storyteller.He also makes the point, very well indeed, that biologists should know the history of their discipline.This not only lets them avoid reinventing the wheel; it also teaches how science develops and can develop.
As one who was lured from studying bird behavior to studying human behavior (anthropology) half a century ago, I loved reading about the controversies that were so exciting in those days--now ancient history.I briefly re-lived the excitement of seeing Lack triumph over Wynne-Edwards; back then in the 1950s, I was initially convinced by Wynne-Edwards but overwhelming evidence convinced me otherwise.If those names don't register, read this book!The controversy is still important.
Birkhead is very good on the history of bird song research.Birds learn their songs, with innate patterns guiding the process.When I was a student, this was new information--disproving the idea that birds are mindless automatons that act only through "instinct."Today, we realize that not only do birds learn a great deal; we know humans have many innate patterns shaping our learning.The old Cartesian nonsense about humans being purely creatures of reason, while "animals" are purely machines, was still around when I was a student.Thanks to real science, we know better, and the gap between people and birds has narrowed rather notably.
One thing though:Birkhead is a relentless individual-selection advocate.The book is strikingly silent on W. D. Hamilton's kin-selection research and its revolutionary effects on ornithology in the last 20 years.Birds are highly social, and calculate a great deal about how their behavior affects others in their kingroup.I was just reminded of this, watching crows mob an owl near my house; a pathetic pile of black feathers under the owl's tree reminded me why crows mob owls, and how much risk they take in doing it.They risk dying to save their relatives by driving off the owl.

The History of Ornithology Illustrates the Triumph of Science
Everyone watches birds.Not everyone has binoculars, or takes hikes to see particular specimens to include on a life list.No one, however, can help but enjoy the sight of a wedge of geese in the sky, or two mockingbirds jumping up and down at each other, or hummingbirds shimmering in the face of garden flowers.So it isn't surprising that there should be a long history of bird observation, at first deeply imbued with folklore, then with religious interpretation, and finally with scientific rigor.In _The Wisdom of Birds: An Illustrated History of Ornithology_ (Bloomsbury), ornithologist Tim Birkhead has looked at aspects of bird behavior as we have come to understand it, from Aristotle to the present.Each of his chapters covers one topic, like migration, birdsong, or territory; and he goes back to the earliest understandings of each and brings us up to date.This is an exemplary way to look at one of humans' most admirable traits, the desire better to understand nature, and to see how much better we have gotten at it (and how much more we still have to learn).Birkhead is a witty teacher who can tell a good story to illustrate a point, in clear, prose without jargon.To emphasize the historic aspect of his book, his gorgeous illustrations of birds (even when referring to twentieth century experiments) are all from past centuries, showing how much attention different bird guides had given toward getting details right.

Birkhead introduces us to John Ray, who he considers the greatest of ornithologists.Ray (1622 - 1705) championed the remarkable innovation of getting out to hunt evidence down not in ancient books but in the field with his own eyes and ears.Ray got answers to many questions about bird behavior, but Birkhead points out that, more importantly, he asked the right questions about birds, questions to which we now have at least partial answers.One of the questions Ray asked about birds was just how it was that eggs could be fertilized and turn into chicks.William Harvey (who is more famous for establishing how blood circulates) fastened onto this question.He couldn't find semen anywhere in hens after copulation, and so fell back (with dissatisfaction) on the older explanation that the ovum played the primary role in reproduction while the semen acted "in an ethereal manner" and added nothing materially to the developing embryo.Ray understood that the sperm in semen and the ovum probably united to make the new embryo, but he didn't like the idea much.He could not accept that God would be profligate with sperm, saying that the millions of sperm manufactured and lost "seems not agreeable to the wisdom and providence of Nature."In the chapter on infidelity among birds, Birkhead writes that ministers might instruct their flocks to emulate the sober, unpretentiously dressed, and strictly monogamous birds of the field.They were wrong about the monogamy, but so was Darwin.The pattern for male birds when faced with such promiscuity is to produce lots of sperm and perform lots of coitus.Ray asked, in the unsparing prose of the seventeenth century, "Why should there be implanted in each sex such a vehement and inexpugnable appetite of copulation?"He, and Darwin, and Victorian churchmen might be shocked by the answer, for the answer is female promiscuity.

In each chapter Birkhead traces our understanding of particular behavior in birds and thus repeatedly shows the triumph of scientific explanations.He describes wonderfully clever experiments, like the ones to show how male canaries with the more complicated songs stimulated the females to build their nests faster.He shows how the observations of field ornithologists eventually brought forth the concept of male birds guarding a territory, and that such birds competed for territory directly, and only indirectly did they compete for females.To introduce the investigations of how bird embryos become male or female, he tells us about the cock who was accused of laying eggs in 1474 in Switzerland.The cock was found guilty and burned at the stake.Birkhead examines how bird catchers of old would keep their captives in the dark and then unveil them into a false spring, artificially maximizing the months during which the birds would sing; these were lessons that researchers determining how light affects the bird breeding cycle had to relearn.This is the story not of what we know about birds, although much of what we know is on display here.It is the more important narrative of how we came to know what we know, an inspiring examination of human enquiry.
... Read more

Product Description
An African proverb states that when a knowledgeable old person dies, a whole library disappears. In that light, this book presents knowledge that is new or has not been readily available until now because it has not previously been captured or reported by indigenous people. Indigenous knowledge that embraces ornithology takes in whole social dimensions that are inter-linked with environmental ethos, conservation and management for sustainability. In contrast, western approaches have tended to reduce knowledge to elemental and material references. This book also looks at the significance of indigenous knowledge of birds and their cultural significance, and how these can assist in framing research methods of western scientists working in related areas.

As well as its knowledge base, this book provides practical advice for professionals in conservation and anthropology by demonstrating the relationship between mutual respect, local participation and the building of partnerships for the resolution of joint problems. It identifies techniques that can be transferred to different regions, environments and collections, as well as practices suitable for investigation, adaptation and improvement of knowledge exchange and collection in ornithology. The authors take anthropologists and biologists who have been trained in, and largely continue to practice from, a western reductionist approach, along another path one that presents ornithological knowledge from alternative perspectives, which can enrich the more common approaches to ecological and other studies as well as management for conservation. ... Read more

Product Description
Publisher: London, H. F. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an OCR edition without illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from the publisher's website (GeneralBooksClub.com). You can also preview excerpts of the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Birds; Literary Collections / General; Nature / Birds ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Dictionary of American History, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 1097 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.Focuses on cultures and countries around the world, specifically what is and is not shared culturally by the people who live in a particular country. Entries contain descriptive summaries of the country in question, including demographic, historical, cultural, economic, religious, and political information. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from UXL Complete Life Science Resource, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 806 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.Features alphabetically arranged entries on theories, concepts, and scientific discoveries and developments pertinent to the study of life science in schools today. Also featured is a chronology of discoveries and a report topic section that suggests a range of research topics and experiement ideas. ... Read more