Why Birds Sing

Author: David Rothenberg
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 9780465071357
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
The astonishing variety and richness of bird song is both an aesthetic and a scientific mystery. Biologists have never been able to understand why bird song displays are often so inventive and why so many species devote so many hours to singing. The standard explanations, which generally have to do with territoriality and sexual display, don't begin to account for the astonishing variety and energy that the commonest birds exhibit. Is it possible that birds sing because they like to? This seemingly naïve explanation is starting to look more and more like the truth.In the tradition of classic works by Bernd Heinrich, Edward Abbey, and Terry Tempest Williams, Why Birds Sing is a lyric exploration of bird song that blends the latest scientific research with a deep understanding of musical beauty and form. Based on conversations with neuroscientists, ecologists, and composers, it is the first book to investigate why birds sing and how, and what effect their music has on other animals—particularly humans. Whether playing the clarinet with the white-crested laughing thrush in Pittsburgh, or jamming in the Australian winter breeding grounds of the Albert's lyrebird, Rothenberg journeys to the heart and soul of bird song. Why Birds Sing offers an intimate look at the most lovely of natural phenomena—with surprising insights about the origin of music.

Why Birds Sing

Author: Nina Berkhout
Publisher: ECW Press
ISBN: 1773056212
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 253

Book Description
A charming, deeply felt novel about human connection and finding music between the notes When opera singer Dawn Woodward has an onstage flameout, all she wants is to be left alone. She’s soon faced with other complications the day her husband announces her estranged brother-in-law, Tariq, is undergoing cancer treatment and moving in, his temperamental parrot in tow. To make matters worse, though she can’t whistle herself, she has been tasked with teaching arias to an outspoken group of devoted siffleurs who call themselves the Warblers. Eventually, Tariq and his bird join the class, and Dawn forms unexpected friendships with her new companions. But when her marriage shows signs of trouble and Tariq’s health declines, she begins questioning her foundations, including the career that she has worked so hard to build and the true nature of love and song.

Bird Sounds

Author: Barry Kent MacKay
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 9780811727877
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 164

Book Description
A complete exploration of bird vocalization. Striking full-color illustrations throughout.

Birdsong For The Curious Naturalist

Author: Donald Kroodsma
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 1328919137
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 213

Book Description
Birdsong made easy to understand, lavishly illustrated with color photos, and accompanied by more than 700 online recordings From a leading expert, Birdsong for the Curious Naturalist is a basic, how-to guide that teaches anyone—from beginner to advanced birder—how to listen. In understandable and appealing language, Kroodsma explains why and how birds sing, what various calls mean, and what to listen for from the birds around us. The descriptions are accompanied by color photos of the birds, as well as QR codes that link to an online collection of more than 700 recordings. With these resources, readers are prepared to recognize bird sounds and the birds that make them. Kroodsma encourages readers to find the joy of birdsong and curiosity—to observe, listen intently, be curious, ask questions, and realize that many unanswered questions about birdsong don’t have to rely on scientists for answers but can be answered by any curious naturalist.

Bird Songs

Author: Les Beletsky
Publisher: becker&mayer! Books
ISBN: 0760363269
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 371

Book Description
In Bird Songs, ornithologist Les Beletsky profiles 250 birds alongside colorful illustrations, and includes a digital audio player that provides the corresponding song for each of the 250 birds. Drawing from the collection of the world-renowned Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Bird Songs presents the most notable North American birds—including the rediscovered ivory-billed woodpecker—in a stunning format. Renowned ornithologist Les Beletsky provides a succinct description of each of the 250 birds profiled, with an emphasis on their distinctive songs. Lavish full-color illustrations accompany each account, while a sleek, built-in digital audio player holds 250 corresponding songs and calls. In his foreword, North American bird expert and distinguished natural historian Jon L. Dunn shares insights gained from a lifetime of passionate study. Complete with the most up-to-date and scientifically accurate information, Bird Songs is the first book to capture the enchantment of these beautiful birds in words, pictures, and song.

The Singing Life of Birds

Author: Donald Kroodsma
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0547344872
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 501

Book Description
Listen to birds sing as you’ve never listened before, as the world-renowned birdsong expert Donald Kroodsma takes you on personal journeys of discovery and intrigue. Read stories of wrens and robins, thrushes and thrashers, warblers and whip-poor-wills, bluebirds and cardinals, and many more bird. Learn how each acquires its songs, how songs vary from bird to bird and place to place, how some birds' singing is especially beautiful or ceaseless or complex, how some do not sing at all, how the often quiet female has the last word, and why. Hear a baby wren and the author’s own daughter babble as each learns its local dialect. Listen to the mockingbird by night and by day and count how many different songs he can sing. Marvel at the exquisite harmony in the duet of a wood thrush as he uses his two voice boxes to accompany himself. Feel the extraordinary energy in the songs just before sunrise as dawn’s first light sweeps across this singing planet. Hear firsthand the unmistakable evidence that there are not one but two species of marsh wrens and two species of winter wrens in North America. Learn not only to hear but to see birds sing in the form of sonagrams, as these visual images dance across the pages while you listen to the accompanying audio. Using your trained ears and eyes, you can begin your own journeys of discovery. Listen anew to birds in your backyard and beyond, exploring the singing minds of birds as they tell all that they know. Join Kroodsma not only in identifying but in identifying with singing birds, connecting with nature’s musicians in a whole new way. Please note: this ebook includes embedded audio files. You will only be able to access these files from a device that supports embedded audio.

All the Birds, Singing

Author: Evie Wyld
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN: 0307907775
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Book Description
From one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists, a stunningly insightful, emotionally powerful new novel about an outsider haunted by an inescapable past: a story of loneliness and survival, guilt and loss, and the power of forgiveness. Jake Whyte is living on her own in an old farmhouse on a craggy British island, a place of ceaseless rain and battering wind. Her disobedient collie, Dog, and a flock of sheep are her sole companions, which is how she wants it to be. But every few nights something—or someone—picks off one of the sheep and sounds a new deep pulse of terror. There are foxes in the woods, a strange boy and a strange man, and rumors of an obscure, formidable beast. And there is also Jake’s past, hidden thousands of miles away and years ago, held in the silences about her family and the scars that stripe her back—a past that threatens to break into the present. With exceptional artistry and empathy, All the Birds, Singing reveals an isolated life in all its struggles and stubborn hopes, unexpected beauty, and hard-won redemption. This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.

No Birds Sing Here

Author: Daniel V. Meier Jr.
Publisher: BQB Publishing
ISBN: 1945448962
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Book Description
The search for the literary life. Satire at its Best! In this indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time, two young people, Beckman and Malany set out on an odyssey to find meaning and reality in the artistic life, and in doing so unleash a barrage of humorous, unintended consequences. Beckman and Malany's journey reflects the allegorical evolution of humanity from its primal state, represented by Beckman's dismal life as a dishwasher to the crude, medieval development of mankind in a pool hall, and then to the false but erudite veneer of sophistication of the academic world. The world these protagonists live in is a world without love. It has every other variety of drive and emotion, but not love. Do they know it? Not yet. And they won't until they figure out why no birds sing here. Meier's writing is precise and detailed, whether the situation he describes is clear or ambiguous. Fans of Franzen and Salinger will find Meier to be another sharp, provocative writer of our time.

Born to Sing

Author: Charles Hartshorne
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
First published in 1973, Born to Sing is a monumental undertaking, one of the most comprehensive, totally entertaining studies of bird vocalizations ever available. It offers a global survey of modes of singing, encompassing more than 5,000 species of singing birds, with special analyses of nearly 200 species with highly developed songs. For the professional ornithologist, informed birdwatchers, biologists, psychologists, philosophers, and musicologists with a strong interest in nature.

Nature's Music

Author: Peter R. Marler
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0080473555
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 556

Book Description
The voices of birds have always been a source of fascination. Nature's Music brings together some of the world's experts on birdsong, to review the advances that have taken place in our understanding of how and why birds sing, what their songs and calls mean, and how they have evolved. All contributors have strived to speak, not only to fellow experts, but also to the general reader. The result is a book of readable science, richly illustrated with recordings and pictures of the sounds of birds. Bird song is much more than just one behaviour of a single, particular group of organisms. It is a model for the study of a wide variety of animal behaviour systems, ecological, evolutionary and neurobiological. Bird song sits at the intersection of breeding, social and cognitive behaviour and ecology. As such interest in this book will extend far beyond the purely ornithological - to behavioural ecologists psychologists and neurobiologists of all kinds.* The scoop on local dialects in birdsong* How birdsongs are used for fighting and flirting* The writers are all international authorities on their subject