A twelve-month excursion through nature's seasons as recounted by a lifetime naturalist In this "personal encyclopedia of nature's seasons," lifetime naturalist Bruce Beehler reflects on his three decades of encountering nature in Washington, D.C. The author takes the reader on a year-long journey through the seasons as he describes the wildlife seen and special natural places savored in his travels up and down the Potomac River and other localities in the eastern and central United States. Some of these experiences are as familiar as observing ducks on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., or as unexpected as collecting fifty-million-year-old fossils on a Potomac beach. Beyond our nation's capital, Beehler describes trips to nature's most beautiful green spaces up and down the East Coast that, he says, should be on every nature lover's bucket list. Combining diary entries, riffs on natural subjects, field trips, photographs, and beautiful half-tone wash drawings, this book shows how many outdoor adventures are out there waiting in one's own backyard. The author inspires the reader to embrace nature to achieve a more peaceful existence.
More than 600 lush, stunning photos grace this comprehensive handbook to the birdlife of the Mid-Atlantic region. A Great Blue Heron wades in the shallows of the Potomac River, scanning for unsuspecting prey. Sunlight turns the water translucent as a small school of fish rises to the water's surface. The heron strikes and moments later is swallowing its quarry—predation in action! This handsome Great Blue Heron is but one of the more than 400 bird species found in Delaware, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. It shares the mid-Atlantic with kingfishers, eagles, mergansers, wood warblers, and many more. Exploring backyard birds, birds of prey, and birds of the open ocean, Smithsonian ornithologist Bruce Beehler and premier nature photographer Middleton Evans have crafted a comprehensive volume unparalleled in its beauty and captivating storytelling. Birds of Maryland, Delaware, and the District of Columbia invites readers to experience the birds' lives as they live them: where they nest, how they forage, their various behaviors, and the natural environments they need to survive. Beehler offers practical advice on bird-watching, including how to find, attract, and even garden for birds, as well as the best places to see them in season. He also discusses the best birding apps, websites, and gear; provides advice on planning a birding field trip; and recommends ornithological institutions that will help you cultivate a lifelong birding hobby. Finally, Beehler challenges the reader to think about conservation efforts to preserve local bird populations. With striking color photographs of more than 400 species, this book is a bonanza for nature lovers. A wealth of images immerse the reader in the world of these wonderful creatures. Marvel at the majesty of Ospreys, navigate the ocean with storm-petrels, and nest with Mourning Doves, all while learning about the richness of the birds' lives, the complexities of their habits, and how we can help keep their populations vibrant and aloft for generations to come.
This book is a comprehensive and peerlessly beautiful reference featuring species accounts, lavish photographs and range maps of every one of the 1,175 bird species in the entire North American continent"--
The story of an ornithologist's journey to trace the spring migration of songbirds from the southern border of the United States through the heartland and into Canada. In late March 2015, ornithologist Bruce M. Beehler set off on a solo four-month trek to track songbird migration and the northward progress of spring through America. Traveling via car, canoe, and bike and on foot, Beehler followed woodland warblers and other Neotropical songbird species from the southern border of Texas, where the birds first arrive after their winter sojourns in South America and the Caribbean, northward through the Mississippi drainage to its headwaters in Minnesota and onward to their nesting grounds in the north woods of Ontario. In North on the Wing, Beehler describes both the epic migration of songbirds across the country and the gradual dawning of springtime through the U.S. heartland--the blossoming of wildflowers, the chorusing of frogs, the leafing out of forest canopies--and also tells the stories of the people and institutions dedicated to studying and conserving the critical habitats and processes of spring songbird migration. Inspired in part by Edwin Way Teale's landmark 1951 book North with the Spring, this book--part travelogue, part field journal, and part environmental and cultural history--is a fascinating first-hand account of a once-in-a-lifetime journey. It engages readers in the wonders of spring migration and serves as a call for the need to conserve, restore, and expand bird habitats to preserve them for future generations of both birds and humans.
New Guinea, the largest tropical island, supports a spectacular bird fauna characterized by cassowaries, megapodes, pigeons, parrots, kingfishers, and owlet-nightjars, as well as the iconic birds of paradise and bowerbirds. Of the nearly 800 species of birds recorded from New Guinea, more than 350 are found nowhere else on Earth. This comprehensive annotated checklist of distribution, taxonomy, and systematics of the birds of New Guinea is the first formal review of this avifauna since Ernst Mayr's Checklist, published in 1941. This new book brings together all the systematic, taxonomic, and distributional research conducted on the region's bird families over the last 70 years. Bruce Beehler and Thane Pratt provide the scientific foundation for the names, geographic distributions, and systematic arrangement of New Guinea's bird fauna. All technical information is annotated and a geographic gazetteer and bibliography are included. This book is an ideal complement to the Birds of New Guinea field guide also published by Princeton, and is an essential technical reference for all scientific libraries, ornithologists, and those interested in bird classification. The first complete revision of the New Guinea bird fauna since 1941 Accounts for 75 bird species new to the region Includes a geographic gazetteer, bibliography, and explanations of taxonomic and systematic classifications
The Ecology of Papua provides a comprehensive review of current scientific knowledge on all aspects of the natural history of western (Indonesian) New Guinea. Designed for students of conservation, environmental workers, and academic researchers, it is a richly detailed text, dense with biogeographical data, historical reference, and fresh insight on this complicated and marvelous region. We hope it will serve to raise awareness of Papua on a global as well as local scale, and to catalyze effective conservation of its most precious natural assets. New Guinea is the largest and highest tropical island, and one of the last great wilderness areas remaining on Earth. Papua, the western half of New Guinea, is noteworthy for its equatorial glaciers, its vast forested floodplains, its imposing central mountain range, its Raja Ampat Archipelago, and its several hundred traditional forest-dwelling societies. One of the wildest places left in the world, Papua possesses extraordinary biological and cultural diversity. Today, Papua’s environment is under threat from growing outside pressures to exploit its expansive forests and to develop large plantations of oil palm and biofuels. It is important that Papua’s leadership balance economic development with good resource management, to ensure the long-term well-being of its culturally diverse populace.
Bird and tropical ecology expert Bruce Beehler discusses his experiences while performing his field research in PapuaNew Guinea, India, Madagascar, Indonesia, the Philippines, Panama, and the Ivory Coast, and defines the role that rainforests play in the lives of the indigenous peoples thatoccupy them.
The Ecology of Papua provides a comprehensive review of current scientific knowledge on all aspects of the natural history of western (Indonesian) New Guinea. Designed for students of conservation, environmental workers, and academic researchers, it is a richly detailed text, dense with biogeographical data, historical reference, and fresh insight on this complicated and marvelous region. We hope it will serve to raise awareness of Papua on a global as well as local scale, and to catalyze effective conservation of its most precious natural assets. New Guinea is the largest and highest tropical island, and one of the last great wilderness areas remaining on Earth. Papua, the western half of New Guinea, is noteworthy for its equatorial glaciers, its vast forested floodplains, its imposing central mountain range, its Raja Ampat Archipelago, and its several hundred traditional forest-dwelling societies. One of the wildest places left in the world, Papua possesses extraordinary biological and cultural diversity. Today, Papua’s environment is under threat from growing outside pressures to exploit its expansive forests and to develop large plantations of oil palm and biofuels. It is important that Papua’s leadership balance economic development with good resource management, to ensure the long-term well-being of its culturally diverse populace.
An enthralling exploration of the biologically richest island on Earth, featuring more than 200 spectacular color images by award-winning National Geographic photographer Tim Laman In this beautiful book, Bruce Beehler, a renowned author and expert on New Guinea, and award-winning National Geographic photographer Tim Laman take the reader on an unforgettable journey through the natural and cultural wonders of the world's grandest island. Skillfully combining a wealth of information, a descriptive and story-filled narrative, and more than 200 stunning color photographs, the book unlocks New Guinea's remarkable secrets like never before. Lying between the Equator and Australia's north coast, and surrounded by the richest coral reefs on Earth, New Guinea is the world's largest, highest, and most environmentally complex tropical island—home to rainforests with showy rhododendrons, strange and colorful orchids, tree-kangaroos, spiny anteaters, ingenious bowerbirds, and spectacular birds of paradise. New Guinea is also home to more than a thousand traditional human societies, each with its own language and lifestyle, and many of these tribes still live in isolated villages and serve as stewards of the rainforests they inhabit. Accessible and authoritative, New Guinea provides a comprehensive introduction to the island's environment, animals, plants, and traditional rainforest cultures. Individual chapters cover the island's history of exploration; geology; climate and weather; biogeography; plantlife; insects, spiders, and other invertebrates; freshwater fishes; snakes, lizards, and frogs; birdlife; mammals; paleontology; paleoanthropology; cultural and linguistic diversity; surrounding islands and reefs; the pristine forest of the Foja Mountains; village life; and future sustainability. Complete with informative illustrations and a large, detailed map, New Guinea offers an enchanting account of the island's unequalled natural and cultural treasures.
This book is a comprehensive and peerlessly beautiful reference featuring species accounts, lavish photographs and range maps of every one of the 1,175 bird species in the entire North American continent"--
More than 600 lush, stunning photos grace this comprehensive handbook to the birdlife of the Mid-Atlantic region. A Great Blue Heron wades in the shallows of the Potomac River, scanning for unsuspecting prey. Sunlight turns the water translucent as a small school of fish rises to the water's surface. The heron strikes and moments later is swallowing its quarry—predation in action! This handsome Great Blue Heron is but one of the more than 400 bird species found in Delaware, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. It shares the mid-Atlantic with kingfishers, eagles, mergansers, wood warblers, and many more. Exploring backyard birds, birds of prey, and birds of the open ocean, Smithsonian ornithologist Bruce Beehler and premier nature photographer Middleton Evans have crafted a comprehensive volume unparalleled in its beauty and captivating storytelling. Birds of Maryland, Delaware, and the District of Columbia invites readers to experience the birds' lives as they live them: where they nest, how they forage, their various behaviors, and the natural environments they need to survive. Beehler offers practical advice on bird-watching, including how to find, attract, and even garden for birds, as well as the best places to see them in season. He also discusses the best birding apps, websites, and gear; provides advice on planning a birding field trip; and recommends ornithological institutions that will help you cultivate a lifelong birding hobby. Finally, Beehler challenges the reader to think about conservation efforts to preserve local bird populations. With striking color photographs of more than 400 species, this book is a bonanza for nature lovers. A wealth of images immerse the reader in the world of these wonderful creatures. Marvel at the majesty of Ospreys, navigate the ocean with storm-petrels, and nest with Mourning Doves, all while learning about the richness of the birds' lives, the complexities of their habits, and how we can help keep their populations vibrant and aloft for generations to come.
A twelve-month excursion through nature's seasons as recounted by a lifetime naturalist In this "personal encyclopedia of nature's seasons," lifetime naturalist Bruce Beehler reflects on his three decades of encountering nature in Washington, D.C. The author takes the reader on a year-long journey through the seasons as he describes the wildlife seen and special natural places savored in his travels up and down the Potomac River and other localities in the eastern and central United States. Some of these experiences are as familiar as observing ducks on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., or as unexpected as collecting fifty-million-year-old fossils on a Potomac beach. Beyond our nation's capital, Beehler describes trips to nature's most beautiful green spaces up and down the East Coast that, he says, should be on every nature lover's bucket list. Combining diary entries, riffs on natural subjects, field trips, photographs, and beautiful half-tone wash drawings, this book shows how many outdoor adventures are out there waiting in one's own backyard. The author inspires the reader to embrace nature to achieve a more peaceful existence.
The story of an ornithologist's journey to trace the spring migration of songbirds from the southern border of the United States through the heartland and into Canada. In late March 2015, ornithologist Bruce M. Beehler set off on a solo four-month trek to track songbird migration and the northward progress of spring through America. Traveling via car, canoe, and bike and on foot, Beehler followed woodland warblers and other Neotropical songbird species from the southern border of Texas, where the birds first arrive after their winter sojourns in South America and the Caribbean, northward through the Mississippi drainage to its headwaters in Minnesota and onward to their nesting grounds in the north woods of Ontario. In North on the Wing, Beehler describes both the epic migration of songbirds across the country and the gradual dawning of springtime through the U.S. heartland--the blossoming of wildflowers, the chorusing of frogs, the leafing out of forest canopies--and also tells the stories of the people and institutions dedicated to studying and conserving the critical habitats and processes of spring songbird migration. Inspired in part by Edwin Way Teale's landmark 1951 book North with the Spring, this book--part travelogue, part field journal, and part environmental and cultural history--is a fascinating first-hand account of a once-in-a-lifetime journey. It engages readers in the wonders of spring migration and serves as a call for the need to conserve, restore, and expand bird habitats to preserve them for future generations of both birds and humans.
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