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In pairs, male and female birds appear to work as a team, competing for food, defending nests, and protecting predators, but in fact, because each individual strives to maximize its own reproductive potential, conflicts can occur if one finds a better partner. So while some birds choose one mate for life, others have many partners. In this book, fourteen classic studies of bird behavior are brought together to compare the different partnership patterns from ecological and evolutionary perspectives. Particular attention is paid to the availability of mates, the selection process and the consequences of choosing one mate over another. By comparing between and within species, each chapter outlines the features that influence a pair's reproductive performance and how this interacts with ecological and environmental constraints. Introductory and concluding chapters review the latest thinking on this fascinating subject. The book is aimed at students and researchers in behavioral ecology but can also foster new insights for bird watchers and ornithologists. ... Read more

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A guide to birds shows young ornithologists how to use binoculars and a field guide to spot and identify dozens of species, while providing information about calls, markings, nesting, behavior, and endangered species. ... Read more

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Ten years have passed since the first edition of this book. During that time the field of bird migration has experienced many advances which are reflected in this second edition. No other book exists to bring together the vast amount of information currently available on the subject of bird migration. Includes discussion of evolution and history of bird migration, physiology, orientation mechanisms and threats to migrations and is accessible to experts as well as amateurs. ... Read more

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This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1853 edition by Henry G. Bohn, London. ... Read more

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A standard bibliography that describes in detail 548 of the most important ornithology books containing color plates. Anker provides full collation, plate count and useful annotations. ... Read more

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This title has fewer than 24 printed text pages. Essays on early ornithology and kindred subjects is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by James Roxburgh McClymont is in the English language. If you enjoy the works of James Roxburgh McClymont then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection. ... 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.
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With the publication of the landmark volumes The Birds of South America: The Oscine Passerines and The Birds of South America: The Suboscine Passerines, Robert S. Ridgely and Guy Tudor established themselves as the leading authorities on the songbirds of South America. Reviewers hailed the volumes as the essential reference works for professional ornithologists and avocational birders alike, and they remain the only volumes that provide full scientific coverage of the continent's passerines. Recognizing the need for a more compact guide that birders can take into the field, Ridgely and Tudor have now extracted and updated the essential identification information from The Birds of South America to create the Field Guide to the Songbirds of South America. This definitive guide is filled with indispensable features:• 121 color plates that present Guy Tudor's magnificently detailed paintings of more than 1,500 species of songbirds, including more than 400 that were not illustrated in BOSA• 160 additional color illustrations of subspecies and females• Extensively updated color range maps for all of the species in the field guide, prepared by Robert S. Ridgely with technical assistance from Maria Allen and Terry Clarke, appear opposite the plates for each bird family• Robert S. Ridgely's authoritative accounts of nearly 2,000 species that cover each bird's abundance, habitat, and range; elevational preference; taxonomic or nomenclatural changes; plumage description; general behavior and voice; and range beyond South America, if applicable ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

*The* book to get if you're birding in South America
I recently traveled to Brazil for a conference and some birding-oriented travel, and waffled between purchasing this book (accompanied by Erize et al.'s non-passerine Birds of South America) or the single-volume Birds of Brazil by Ber van Perlo.At the advice of a few birder friends who had recently spent time in Brazil, I chose Ridgely and Tudor - and I am so glad that I did!Most other people I birded with had van Perlo's book, so I was able to compare the plates side-by-side.Ridgely and Tudor was superior, often by orders of magnitude, in every single case - better, more accurate drawings; more accurate color rendition; more updated and precise range information; and more in-depth natural-history descriptions. This is the book to buy, no doubt about it!

Great Book, gorgeous drawings and fair price!
We bird watchers should be grateful to Ridgely and Tudor for making this book... beautifully pictured species and nice content. One can feel how much these guys appreciate those animals. Along with Avifauna Brasileira by T. Sigrist, they are the best guides of SA and Brazilian birds I have ever read. I am just excited to have in hands the next volumes 3 and 4 ! Some suggestions to next edition to be included are:
a. separate atlas and text into 2 tomes for it's more practical to handle with in the field.
b. definitely important to add a list of bird names in Brazilian portuguese! At least put them at the side of American names.
c. include a "book marker" with the mark color legends, etc. It is nice to mark pages and to quick find yourself in the many colors in the maps.

A Neotropical Birding Must Have!!!
I agree with everyone here. This book is a fantastic resource, much awaited by those of us who owned the original two hardcovers. It is still pretty big in this revised paperback edition, but you will definitely want to take it along on your next South American birding trip, even if it waits for you back in the lodge while you are out in the field each day.

I have to say -- Guy Tudor's illustrations are the most beautiful I have ever seen in any neotropical field guide, including the guides he has done for Colombia and Venezuela. Between trips, you will just want to sit for hours in your favorite easy chair, enjoying this book and studying for future trips.As for accuracy -- several birds on my last trip to NE Peru were only identifiable with the use of this guide.In a few cases, even the very good Princeton University Press "Birds of Peru" came up short. Between Tudor's fine illustrations and Ridgely's concise commentaries, these difficult IDs were nailed.

In short, for anyone planning a birding trip to South America, this book is a must have! Hopefully these two authors are currently hard at work on their long-promised guide to the non-passerines.In the meantime, the existing Princeton checklist for the Non-Passerines of S.A. is really not that bad.

superb book
So good, that I ordered a second one to split it and take the plates with me to the field in our birding trips!... [...]

A 'foundation title' for any serious birder's library
College-level collections strong in South American nature guides, particularly those possessing prior volumes in the series, will find "Field Guide to Songbirds of South America: The Passerines" continues the trend as an essential reference for professional ornithologists and birders: the only volumes to provide complete scientific coverage of the continent's passerines. It's hefty - over 700 pages - yet compact, so birders can take it into the field, and it extracts and updated the identification information from "The Birds of South America", with over a hundred color plates and 150 additional color illustrations of subspecies and females accompanying extensively updated color range maps and more. Very highly recommended as a 'foundation title' for any serious birder's library. ... Read more

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Contributors to this volume offer new research on extinctionprocesses in birds, nest predation, and song systems, and describes agraphical model that helps predict the reproductive consequences oftime allocation between the competing demands of guarding young birdsand foraging for food. Current Ornithology is the onlyEnglish-language publication currently devoted exclusively toextensive reviews and synthesis of topics pertaining to all aspects ofthe biology of birds. Chapters fall under such diverse rubrics asecology, evolution, behavior, phylogeny, behavioral ecology, anatomyand physiology, and conservation biology. All authors are leadingauthorities on their subjects, and each chapter is refereed by expertsin the topics covered. Although all chapters focus primarily on birds,some topics, such as the social cognition of birds as compared toprimates (Volume 13), have significant application to disciplinesoutside of ornithology. Current Ornithology aims to provide anaccessible, up-to-date, accurate source of data and to contribute toconceptual generalization and unification across the biologicalsciences. ... Read more

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This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

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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

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This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1888 edition by R.H. Porter, London. ... Read more