Ten Thousand Birds PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Ten Thousand Birds PDF full book. Access full book title Ten Thousand Birds by Tim Birkhead. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Tim Birkhead
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400848830
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 545
Get Book
Book Description
Ten Thousand Birds provides a thoroughly engaging and authoritative history of modern ornithology, tracing how the study of birds has been shaped by a succession of visionary and often-controversial personalities, and by the unique social and scientific contexts in which these extraordinary individuals worked. This beautifully illustrated book opens in the middle of the nineteenth century when ornithology was a museum-based discipline focused almost exclusively on the anatomy, taxonomy, and classification of dead birds. It describes how in the early 1900s pioneering individuals such as Erwin Stresemann, Ernst Mayr, and Julian Huxley recognized the importance of studying live birds in the field, and how this shift thrust ornithology into the mainstream of the biological sciences. The book tells the stories of eccentrics like Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, a pathological liar who stole specimens from museums and quite likely murdered his wife, and describes the breathtaking insights and discoveries of ambitious and influential figures such as David Lack, Niko Tinbergen, Robert MacArthur, and others who through their studies of birds transformed entire fields of biology. Ten Thousand Birds brings this history vividly to life through the work and achievements of those who advanced the field. Drawing on a wealth of archival material and in-depth interviews, this fascinating book reveals how research on birds has contributed more to our understanding of animal biology than the study of just about any other group of organisms.
Author: Tim Birkhead
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400848830
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 545
Get Book
Book Description
Ten Thousand Birds provides a thoroughly engaging and authoritative history of modern ornithology, tracing how the study of birds has been shaped by a succession of visionary and often-controversial personalities, and by the unique social and scientific contexts in which these extraordinary individuals worked. This beautifully illustrated book opens in the middle of the nineteenth century when ornithology was a museum-based discipline focused almost exclusively on the anatomy, taxonomy, and classification of dead birds. It describes how in the early 1900s pioneering individuals such as Erwin Stresemann, Ernst Mayr, and Julian Huxley recognized the importance of studying live birds in the field, and how this shift thrust ornithology into the mainstream of the biological sciences. The book tells the stories of eccentrics like Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, a pathological liar who stole specimens from museums and quite likely murdered his wife, and describes the breathtaking insights and discoveries of ambitious and influential figures such as David Lack, Niko Tinbergen, Robert MacArthur, and others who through their studies of birds transformed entire fields of biology. Ten Thousand Birds brings this history vividly to life through the work and achievements of those who advanced the field. Drawing on a wealth of archival material and in-depth interviews, this fascinating book reveals how research on birds has contributed more to our understanding of animal biology than the study of just about any other group of organisms.
Author: Alex Horne
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0753519283
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 386
Get Book
Book Description
Alex Horne is not a birdwatcher. But his dad is, so with the prospect of fatherhood looming on his own horizon, Alex decided there was no better time to really get to know both his father and his father's favourite hobby. So he challenged his dad to a Big Year: from 1 January to 31 December they would each try to spot as many birds as possible; the one who spied the most species would be the victor. Along the way Alex would find out what makes his dad tick, pick up a bit of fatherly wisdom and perhaps even 'get into' birdwatching himself. Join Alex as he journeys from Barnes to Bahrain in this charming tale of obsession, manliness, fathers and sons, and the highly amusing twists and turns of a year-long bird race.
Author: Tim Birkhead
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 140883054X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Get Book
Book Description
What is it like to be a swift, flying at over one hundred kilometres an hour? Or a kiwi, plodding flightlessly among the humid undergrowth in the pitch dark of a New Zealand night? And what is going on inside the head of a nightingale as it sings, and how does its brain improvise?Bird Sense addresses questions like these and many more, by describing the senses of birds that enable them to interpret their environment and to interact with each other. Our affinity for birds is often said to be the result of shared senses - vision and hearing - but how exactly do their senses compare with our own? And what about a birds' sense of taste, or smell, or touch or the ability to detect the earth's magnetic field? Or the extraordinary ability of desert birds to detect rain hundreds of kilometres away - how do they do it?Bird Sense is based on a conviction that we have consistently underestimated what goes on in a bird's head. Our understanding of bird behaviour is simultaneously informed and constrained by the way we watch and study them. By drawing attention to the way these frameworks both facilitate and inhibit discovery, it identifies ways we can escape from them to seek new horizons in bird behaviour.There has never been a popular book about the senses of birds. No one has previously looked at how birds interpret the world or the way the behaviour of birds is shaped by their senses. A lifetime spent studying birds has provided Tim Birkhead with a wealth of observation and an understanding of birds and their behaviour that is firmly grounded in science.
Author: Ted Floyd
Publisher:
ISBN: 1426220030
Category : House & Home
Languages : en
Pages : 308
Get Book
Book Description
"In this elegant narrative, celebrated naturalist Ted Floyd guides you through a year of becoming a better birder. Choosing 200 top avian species to teach key lessons, Floyd introduces a new, holistic approach to bird watching and shows how to use the tools of the 21st century to appreciate the natural world we inhabit together whether city, country or suburbs." -- From book jacket.
Author: Tor Udall
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1408878658
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 336
Get Book
Book Description
'A masterful exploration of love, loss and the healing power of the natural world. Heartbreaking and uplifting in equal measure' Observer LONGLISTED FOR THE AUTHORS' CLUB BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2018 Jonah roams Kew Gardens trying to reassemble the shattered pieces of his life after the death of his wife, Audrey. Weathering the seasons and learning to love again, he meets Chloe, an enigmatic origami artist who is hesitant to let down her own walls. In the gardens he also meets ten-year-old Milly, and Harry, a gardener, both of whom have secrets of their own to keep – and mysteries to solve.
Author: Tim Birkhead
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241990149
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 310
Get Book
Book Description
Award-winning writer and ornithologist Tim Birkhead takes us on an epic and dazzling journey through this mutual history with birds. Since the dawn of human history, birds have stirred our imagination, inspiring and challenging our ideas about science, faith, art and philosophy, from the ibises mummified by Ancient Egyptians and Renaissance experiments on the woodpecker to the Victorian obsessions with egg collecting and our present fight to save endangered species. Weaving in stories from his own life as a scientist, this rich and fascinating book is the culmination of a lifetime's research and unforgettably shows how birds shaped us, and how we have shaped them. 'Thought-provoking at every turn, this inspiring, shocking, wonder-filled exploration of our relationship with birds' Isabella Tree, author of Wilding 'A fascinating book about the close and often surprising relationship between birds and people' Stephen Moss
Author: Judith Farquhar
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 1935408186
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Get Book
Book Description
Examines the myriad ways contemporary residents of Beijing understand and nurture the good life, practice the embodied arts of everyday well-being, and in doing so draw on cultural resources ranging from ancient metaphysics to modern media.
Author: Tim Birkhead
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1632863715
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Get Book
Book Description
A bird's egg is a nearly perfect survival capsule--an external womb--and one of natural selection's most wonderful creations. Shortlisted for the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize 2016.One of Forbes' Best Books About Birds and Birding in 2016. Renowned ornithologist Tim Birkhead opens this gripping story as a female guillemot chick hatches, already carrying her full quota of tiny eggs within her undeveloped ovary. As she grows into adulthood, only a few of her eggs mature, are released into the oviduct, and are fertilized by sperm stored from copulation that took place days or weeks earlier. Within a matter of hours, the fragile yolk is surrounded by albumen and the whole is gradually encased within a turquoise jewel of a shell. Soon the fully formed egg is expelled onto a rocky ledge, where it will be incubated for four weeks before a chick emerges and the life cycle begins again. THE MOST PERFECT THING is about how eggs in general are made, fertilized, developed, and hatched. Birkhead uses birds' eggs as wondrous portals into natural history, enlivened by the stories of naturalists and scientists, including Birkhead and his students, whose discoveries have advanced current scientific knowledge of reproduction.
Author: Tim Birkhead
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408849437
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Get Book
Book Description
The creation of Dolly the sheep in the 1990s was for many people the start of a new era: the age of genetically modified animals. However, the idea was not new for in the 1920s an amateur scientist, Hans Duncker, decided to genetically engineer a red canary. Though his experiments failed, they paved the way for others to succeed when it was recognised that the canary needed to be both a product of nature and nurture. This highly original narrative, of huge contemporary relevance, reveals how the obsession with turning the wild canary from green to red heralded the exciting but controversial developments in genetic manipulation.
Author: Amy Makechnie
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 153448230X
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 384
Get Book
Book Description
Twelve-year-old Golden Maroni starts eighth grade determined to be master of his universe, but learns he cannot control everything on the soccer field, in his friendships, and especially in facing his father's incurable disease.
