Of a Feather A Brief History of American Birding |
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Author:
| Weidensaul, Scott |
ISBN: | 978-0-15-603355-8 |
Publication Date: | Sep 2007 |
Publisher: | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade & Reference Publishers
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Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | AUD $21.95 |
Book Description:
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Arriving in the New World, Europeans were awestruck by a continent awash with birds. Today tens of millions of Americans birders have made a once eccentric hobby into something so mainstream it's (almost) cool.Scott Weidensaul traces the colorful evolution of American birding: from the frontier ornithologists who collected eggs between border skirmishes to the society matrons who organized the first effective conservation movement; from the luminaries with...
More Description Arriving in the New World, Europeans were awestruck by a continent awash with birds. Today tens of millions of Americans birders have made a once eccentric hobby into something so mainstream it's (almost) cool.Scott Weidensaul traces the colorful evolution of American birding: from the frontier ornithologists who collected eggs between border skirmishes to the society matrons who organized the first effective conservation movement; from the luminaries with checkered pasts, such as convicted blackmailer Alexander Wilson and the endlessly self-mythologizing John James Audubon, to the awkward schoolteacher Roger Tory Peterson, whoseA Field Guide to the Birds prompted the explosive growth of modern birding. Spirited and compulsively readable,Of a Feathercelebrates the passions and achievements of birders throughout Americcan history.