|
| Living on the Wind : Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds | 
| Author: Scott Weidensaul
Publisher: North Point Press
Category: Book
List Price: $26.00
Buy New: $20.24
You Save: $5.76 (22%)
New (6) from $20.24
Avg. Customer Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 1094759
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 420
Dimensions (in): 7 x 6 x 1
ASIN: B0001LUGYI
Publication Date: April 30, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
Did you know that neither temperature nor hunger sparks bird migration? That many species migrate at night? That some birds migrate more than 5,000 miles in a single, uninterrupted flight? "We are such stodgy, rooted creatures," observes the author of this fascinating book. "To think of crossing thousands of miles under our own power is as incomprehensible as jumping the moon. Yet even the tiniest of birds perform such miracles." For anyone curious about the lives of migratory birds (and, incidentally, those of bird-obsessed humans), this book is a great nest of information. The author has traveled all over the world banding and observing birds and talking to the experts--amateur birders and ornithologists who have made many of the important discoveries about bird biology. From Alaska to Lake Erie to the limestone forests of Jamaica, Weidensaul reaches not only for the scientific particulars but for the universal stories and humanizing, descriptive turns of phrase that keep this book from bogging down in statistics and jargon. By book's end the reader is unable to resist the heart of this compelling story, a plea for the conservation of habitat to keep these miraculous creatures on--or at least circling--the earth. --Maria Dolan
Product Description
The magnificent story of the natural world's most epic journeys.
At whatever moment you read these words, there are birds aloft in the skies of the Western Hemisphere, migrating. If it is spring or fall, the great pivot points of the year, then the continents are swarming with hundreds of millions of traveling birds-a flood so great that even the most ignorant or unobservant notice the skeins of geese and the flocks of robins.
Bird migration is the one truly unifying natural phenomenon in the world, stitching the continents together in a way that even the great weather systems, which roar out from the poles but fizzle at the equator, fail to do. Scott Weidensaul follows the awesome kettles of hawks over the Mexican coastal plains, the bar-tailed godwits that hitchhike on gale winds 6,000 miles nonstop across the Pacific from Alaska to New Zealand, and the myriad songbirds whose numbers have dwindled so dramatically in recent decades. Migration paths form an elaborate global web that shows serious signs of fraying, and Weidensaul delves into the tragedies of habitat degradation and deforestation with an urgency that brings to life the vast problems these miraculous migrants now face.
A magisterial book, Living on the Wind vivifies what may be the most compelling drama of the natural world.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
The How's, Why's, Where's, and Wonder of North & South American Bird Migration. January 10, 2008
Scott Weidensaul writes precisely and eloquently about bird migration in "Living on the Wind", which was a nominated finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2000. In what is "perhaps the most compelling drama in all of natural history", an estimated 5 billion birds migrate annually, across continents and oceans, some without stopping to rest or eat for thousands of miles. Weidensaul tells us why birds migrate and how. He paints a picture of these extraordinary journeys and the birds that make them in North, Central, and South America. As some migrating birds are in crisis due to loss of habitat and disturbances in their breeding, stopover, and wintering grounds, the author examines the current threats to migrants and the controversies over their nature and significance.
In three parts -Southbound, Hiatus, and Northbound- "Living on the Wind" examines the journeys of migratory birds, regales us with incredible stories of a variety of species, and tells us where they go and how they live in their wintering grounds. Weidensaul has endured the cold of Monterey Bay, tromped through Jamaica's acacia forests, counted the massive migration through Veracruz with blistered thumb, banded hawks in Argentina, stood in the midst of a "fallout" near the Gulf coast, and generally traversed North and South America to see and understand migrants. He recounts his experiences with a wonder and drama that made me long to visit some of these places myself.
We also learn of birds that stay in their frigid climates, irruptive species that migrate only occasionally, birds who migrate south to wintry Vermont, and some species for whom habitat transformation has meant overpopulation, such as snow geese and Canada geese. I found especially fascinating the discussions of how migratory birds navigate, differences in the needs and fates of neotropical migrants and resident birds that co-exist in the same habitats, and the very preventable threats to migrants, such as feral cats. I was struck by how much has been learned about migrants in the past couple of decades through new technologies and broader study, but also by how difficult it is to pin down definitive data about these itinerant creatures. "Living on the Wind" is a treasure trove of information for birdlovers and thoroughly enjoyable for a general audience as well.
Outstanding and thoroughly enjoyable popular science work on birds June 16, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
_Living on the Wind_ by Scott Weidensaul is a very ambitious book, one in which the author tried to convey both the science and the drama of bird migration in the Western Hemisphere, traveling for six years from Alaska to Argentina and speaking to experts as well as viewing close up an amazing variety of birds from the Arctic tundra to Central American rain forests.
The book is divided into three sections. "Southbound" focused on the fall migration as well as topics on migration in general.
Weidensaul stressed that one shouldn't view migration as moving away from something unpleasant, such as the cold, but rather as moving towards something beneficial, mainly an area where food is plentiful. Viewing migration as a simply north-south issue clearly shows a North American bias; birds in southern South America fly north to their wintering grounds, tropical birds fly relatively short distances but on migrations nonetheless in response to among other things the ripening of fruits or the blossoming of flowers, and many ocean birds undergo complex and intricate perambulations of entire oceans on an annual basis (the greater shearwater breeds in the South Atlantic but covers a 13,000 mile route every nine months, a route that includes going up past South America to Canada, then over to Europe in autumn, and then returning down the coast of Africa). Not all North American birds winter in the Americas; the bristle-thighed curlew nests in western Alaska but winters as much as 5,000 miles away in such Pacific islands as Tahiti, while the bar-tailed godwit winters 6,800 miles away from its Alaskan home in New Zealand (flying nonstop for up to five days).
The reader learns some birds are "complete migrants" (they entirely vacate their breeding grounds at the end of nesting season) and some are "partial migrants" (a portion of the population remains year-round). Most birds other than hawks migrate at night, partially to avoid predators (like hawks), to free up daytime hours for finding food, because the atmosphere is less turbulent at night, and because the chillier and damper night air can help cool overheated migrating birds and work to stem moisture loss. Thanks to human activity, many birds winter farther north than they once did, whether due to backyard birdfeeders in the case of finches or specially maintained refuges for waterfowl; this phenomenon is known as "shortstopping."
The author spent a good deal of time discussing how birds find their way on migrations. A fascinating discussion, migration involves a genetic program, a time of migratory restlessness when the daylight diminishes to a certain point and the urge to fly in a certain direction sets in, coupled in some species with a innate time-distance or time-and-direction (or vector navigation) program, a set of genetic instructions that instruct the bird to fly a certain direction for a specific length of time, change heading, and then precede on another for a preset period of time. Those directions are determined mainly by celestial and magnetic orientation but research has shown that infrasound (extremely low-frequency waves of the sort generated by ocean surf, which can travel for thousands of miles) may play a role as well.
Modifying this program though are a "hierarchy of orientation clues," which serve to refine a bird's navigation on subsequent flights, often enabling a bird to find specific breeding and wintering grounds with stunning accuracy. Clues such as learning geographic landmarks, olfactory, infrasound, and local magnetic clues help the migrating bird.
The second section, "Hiatus," focused on birds and their wintering grounds, from stay-at-home year-round resident birds alongside frozen Hudson Bay to birds of steamy rainforests and the Argentine pampas. Many birds like warblers and tanagers really are tropical birds to begin with; an oriole might spend four months in its temperate breeding range but seven months in the tropics, while some Canadian warblers spend less than three months there. Some birds migrate only as far south as southern Canada or the northern U.S. to winter. Others, such as the northern finches, follow an erratic and very unpredictable pattern of migration known as an irruption, a pattern tied to seed production in their normal range that in bad years may send birds as far south as the Gulf Coast.
The author discussed research on how faithful birds are to their wintering sites, debates over whether or not they are benefited by disturbed habitat, how flexible they are on their wintering grounds with regards to food and habitat, and how some species have completely different diets and habits on their wintering grounds (in some species the males and females will winter in different areas).
Threats to wintering birds were well discussed, covering such topics as the use of pesticides in Latin American countries (tens of thousands of Swainson's hawks have died from pesticides in Argentina), habitat destruction, changes in coffee-growing practices (shade-grown coffee plantations still have a great deal of habitat for birds but sun-coffee or technified farms are "biological deserts"), and disease (wetland destruction has forced waterfowl and shorebirds into overloaded federal and state refuges, what one researcher called "bird ghettos").
The third section, "Northbound," tracked the surge of migrants through the American Southwest, Great Plains, and the Gulf Coast. Topics of discussion often center on threats to migrating birds, including loss of hardwood forests along the Gulf Coast, a vital source of nutrients for migrating birds (increasingly usurped by industrialized pine plantations and beach homes), the loss of native grassland (a trend that is "nearly apocalyptic;" Iowa only has one-tenth of one percent left, while Minnesota has one percent left) which has caused grassland birds to decline faster, longer, and over a wider area than any other type, and the tremendous threats to breeding woodland birds due to forest fragmentation, opening up formerly deep woods to predators such as cats and also cowbirds, which are rapidly expanding their ranges and numbers and are a huge threat to eastern birds with no experience with brood parasites.
A keeper for birders April 16, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The detail and fluidity of this book amazes me. The author's passion for his love of birds shines through on every page. It's a work of love.
I didn't begin to "bird" until my days in New Jersey (2000-2004) when I'd drive to the beautiful Jersey Shore and watch water fowl and migratory eagles, falcons and osprey nest along the banks of the braggish waters. I've been fascinated by raptors ever since, and the chapter "River of Hawks" had me longing for more.
The author traveled all over North and South America, mixing in some travelogue with his more scientific paragraphs. His descriptions of Patagonia, AZ (p. 59) and Monterey, CA (p. 93) were right on target even for the non-birder.
The time he spent researching, traveling, meeting with locals is astounding. He traveled to Mexico, Argentinia, Alaska, Canada, Jamaica and various places within the United States to watch the birds himself.
The book ends on a melancholy note, citing the need to preserve and conserve what natural habitat we have left in the world, not just for our feathered friends, but for fish and humans. No work on nature would be complete without a passage of hope that natural nesting areas and a habitat free of toxins will prevail.
This book is a must-read. Like a few other reviewers have stated, my only recommendation would be perhaps a picture, even a black-white picture, of the many birds mentioned in this book.
Vivid and poetic language November 10, 2004
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
The information on bird migration is absolutely engrossing. However, the language Weidensaul uses is even more enjoyable. I kept the computer dictionary next to me while reading the book to check the beautiful language used to describe bird behavior and their habitats. This book is inspiring and thought provoking even for non-birders like me (I am likely classified as a computer geek).
A Wonderful BookI April 30, 2003
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
If you enjoy nature reading you will love this book. I am not a birder, but nevertheless found this book to be an eloquent and fascinating read. Weidensaul introduces and explores a world that occurs around us every day but that few of us know anything about. He writes extremely well. Overall, a wonderful book.
|
|
|
Wildlife, nature and the Environment
Sponsored Links
Learn how to get your own Amazon Book shop | |
