3.5
Of a Feather
ByPublisher Description
From the moment Europeans arrived in North America, they were awestruck by a continent awash with birds—great flocks of wild pigeons, prairies teeming with grouse, woodlands alive with brilliantly colored songbirds.
traces the colorful origins of American birding: the frontier ornithologists who collected eggs between border skirmishes; the society matrons who organized the first effective conservation movement; and the luminaries with checkered pasts, such as Alexander Wilson (a convicted blackmailer) and the endlessly self-mythologizing John James Audubon.
Naturalist Scott Weidensaul also recounts the explosive growth of modern birding that began when an awkward schoolteacher named Roger Tory Peterson published
in 1934. Today, birding counts iPod-wearing teens and obsessive "listers" among its tens of millions of participants, making what was once an eccentric hobby into something so completely mainstream it's now (almost) cool. This compulsively readable popular history will surely find a roost on every birder's shelf.
"Weidensaul is a charming guide. . . . You don't have to be a birder to enjoy this look at one of today's fastest-growing (and increasingly competitive) hobbies."
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesOf a Feather Reviews
3.5
“Here’s a lengthy tour of the history of bird-watching, birding, and eventually, the need for bird conservation. Weidensaul recounts the astounding past of colonists “discovering” and then decimating vast populations of teeming North American avian wildlife. The reader learns names of explorers and bird-lovers attached to various species, and the more recent history of field guides and “recreational birding”.
Finally, a vignette about bird-banding the reclusive saw-whet owl brings the volume home to the present reality of bird study: still much to learn and a need to protect.”
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