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ShareF rom 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.
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Of a Feather 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.
Scott Weidensaul also recounts the explosive growth of modern birding that began when an awkward schoolteacher named Roger Tory Peterson published A Field Guide to the Birds in 1934.
Today birding counts iPod-wearing teens and obsessive ÒlistersÓ 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..
For more information about the title Of a Feather: A Brief History of American Birding, read the full description at Amazon.com, or see the following related books:
Birding by Ear: Eastern and Central North America (Peterson Field Guides(R)) — BIRDING BY EAR uses an educational and entertaining method for learning bird songs. Instead of merely providing a catalog of bird song samples, ... > read more
Sibley's Birding Basics — “I wrote and illustrated this book to help every inquisitive birder, from novice to expert. Whether you can identify six birds or six hundred, ... > read more
National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America, Fifth Edition (National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America) — Birding is the fastest growing wildlife-related activity in the U.S., and even conservative estimates put the current number of U.S. birders at 50 ... > read more
The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America — The Sibley Guide to Birds has quickly become the new standard of excellence in bird identification guides, covering more than 810 North American ... > read moreRecommend this page on Facebook, Twitter,
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