The Running Sky

Author: Tim Dee
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781407454467
Category : Bird watchers
Languages : en
Pages : 307

Book Description
In The Running Sky, ornithologist Tim Dee maps his own observations and encounters over four decades of tracking birds from northern Shetland to south-west England via downtown Los Angeles and a tobacco farm in southern Zambia. He writes about near-global birds including sparrows, starlings and ravens, and exotic species, such as the electrically coloured hummingbirds in California and broadbills in Africa.

Vesper Flights

Author: Helen Macdonald
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 0802146694
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Book Description
The New York Times–bestselling author of H is for Hawk explores the human relationship to the natural world in this “dazzling” essay collection (Wall Street Journal). In Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved essays, along with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches to her own private vespers while trying to fall asleep. Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, Helen invites us into her most intimate experiences: observing the massive migration of songbirds from the top of the Empire State Building, watching tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary, seeking the last golden orioles in Suffolk’s poplar forests. She writes with heart-tugging clarity about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds’ nests, and the unexpected guidance and comfort we find when watching wildlife.

Crow Country

Author: Mark Cocker
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1784871125
Category : Corvus
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
The Birds and the Bees series was designed for Vintage Classics by Timorous Beasties, the Scottish studio famous for their designs inspired by the natural world One night Mark Cocker followed the roiling, deafening flock of rooks and jackdaws which regularly passed over his Norfolk home on their way to roost in the Yare valley. From the moment he watched the multitudes blossom as a mysterious dark flower above the woods, these gloriously commonplace birds became for Cocker a fixation and a way of life. Journeying across Britain, through spectacular failures, magical successes and epiphanies, Cocker uncovers the mysteries of these birds' inner lives. SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2008 SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE

Bee Journal

Author: Sean Borodale
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448138248
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 95

Book Description
Bee Journal is a startlingly original poetry sequence: a poem-journal of beekeeping that chronicles the life of the hive, from the collection of a small nucleus on the first day to the capture of a swarm two years later. It observes the living architecture of the comb, the range and locality of the colony; its flights, flowers, water sources, parasites, lives and deaths. These poems were written at the hive wearing a veil and gloves, and the journal is an intrinsic part of the kinetic activity of keeping bees: making 'tiny, regular checks' in the turn around the central figure of the sun, and minute exploratory interventions through the round of the year. The book is full of moments of revelation - particularly of the relationship between the domestic and the wild. In attempting to record and invoke something of the complexity of the relationship between 'keeper' and 'kept' it tunes ear and speech towards the ecstasy of bees, between the known and the unknown. Because of its genesis as a working journal, there is here an unusual intimacy and deep scrutiny of life and death in nature. The language itself is dense and clotted, the imagery thrillingly fresh, and the observing eye close, scrupulous and full of wonder. Bee Journal is one of the most unusual and exciting poetry debuts in years.

The Life of the Skies

Author: Jonathan Rosen
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780374186302
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Book Description
Aerial delights: A history of America as seen through the eyes of a bird-watcher John James Audubon arrived in America in 1803, when Thomas Jefferson was president, and lived long enough to see his friend Samuel Morse send a telegraphic message from his house in New York City in the 1840s. 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.

Four Fields

Author: Tim Dee
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1409028089
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Book Description
In his first book since the acclaimed The Running Sky Tim Dee tells the story of four green fields. Four fields spread around the world: their grasses, their hedges, their birds, their skies, and their natural and human histories. Four real fields – walkable, mappable, man-made, mowable and knowable, but also secretive, mysterious, wild, contested and changing. Four fields – the oldest and simplest and truest measure of what a man needs in life – looked at, thought about, worked in, lived with, written. Dee’s four fields, which he has known for more than twenty years, are the fen field at the bottom of his Cambridgeshire garden, a field in southern Zambia, a prairie field in Little Bighorn, Montana, USA, and a grass meadow in the exclusion zone at Chernobyl, Ukraine. Meditating on these four fields, Dee makes us look anew at where we live and how. He argues that we must attend to what we have made of the wild, to look at and think about the way we have messed things up but also to notice how we have kept going alongside nature, to listen to the conversation we have had with grass and fields. Four Fields is a profound, lyrical book by one of Britain’s very best writers about nature. Shortlisted for the 2014 Ondaatje Prize

Following the Wild Bees

Author: Thomas D. Seeley
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691191247
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Book Description
A how-to book on an exhilarating outdoor activity and a unique meditation on the pleasures of the natural world Following the Wild Bees is a delightful foray into the pastime of bee hunting, an exhilarating outdoor activity that used to be practiced widely but which few people know about today. Weaving informative discussions of bee biology with colorful anecdotes, personal insights, and beautiful photos, Thomas Seeley describes the history and science behind this lost pastime and how anyone can do it. The bee hunter’s reward is a thrilling encounter with nature that challenges mind and body while also giving insights into the remarkable behavior of honey bees living in the wild. Whether you’re a bee enthusiast or just curious about the natural world, this book is the ideal companion for newcomers to bee hunting and a rare treat for armchair naturalists.

The Bee Tree

Author: Patricia Polacco
Publisher: Turtleback Books
ISBN: 9780613073257
Category : Bees
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
To teach his granddaughter the value of books, a grandfather leads a growing crowd in search of the tree where the bees keep all their honey

Two Many Birds

Author: Cindy Derby
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
ISBN: 1250815266
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 48

Book Description
Filled with heart, humor, and relevance, this side-splitting picture book, Two Many Birds, by author/illustrator Cindy Derby, opens minds and entertains all at once. As birds line up to perch on a tree, a monitor shouts rules at them: No fluffin' feathers! No pooping on the ground! No nudity! Eventually, the tree fills to capactiy (100 birds), but what happens when two more are accidentally born among the branches?

The Big Book of Birds

Author: Yuval Zommer
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0500651515
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The next Big Book in the series introduces young children to some of the most colorful, magnificent, silly, and surprising feathered creatures from around the world. Following up the hugely successful The Big Book of Bugs, The Big Book of Beasts, and The Big Book of the Blue, The Big Book of Birds is a fact-filled tour of the world’s most wonderful winged creatures. Yuval Zommer’s distinctive illustrations show off some of the most colorful, flamboyant, impressive, and wacky birds of the sky. Picture-book charm pairs with informative nonfiction to make a beautiful, large-format title for parents to share with young children and for older children to read by themselves. The book draws in children and parents alike with captivating information about and charming illustrations of hummingbirds, peacocks, flamingos, bald eagles, secretary birds, puffins, red-crowned cranes, and more. The book also invites young bird-watchers to protect birds where they live and make their gardens bird-friendly. The text is chatty, funny, and full of remarkable facts. Yuval Zommer’s illustrations and fresh approach are what make this series feel distinct. His glorious and quirky pictures appeal to young children, who will relish the flighty questions and pithy facts about the most exciting creatures of the sky.