Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #294620 in Books
• Published on: 2000-04-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.13" h x 5.42" w x 8.34" l, 1.09 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

From Amazon.com
Did you know that neither temperature nor hunger sparks bird migration? That many species migrate at night? That some birds migrate more than 5,000 miles in a single, uninterrupted flight? "We are such stodgy, rooted creatures," observes the author of this fascinating book. "To think of crossing thousands of miles under our own power is as incomprehensible as jumping the moon. Yet even the tiniest of birds perform such miracles."

For anyone curious about the lives of migratory birds (and, incidentally, those of bird-obsessed humans), this book is a great nest of information. The author has traveled all over the world banding and observing birds and talking to the experts--amateur birders and ornithologists who have made many of the important discoveries about bird biology. From Alaska to Lake Erie to the limestone forests of Jamaica, Weidensaul reaches not only for the scientific particulars but for the universal stories and humanizing, descriptive turns of phrase that keep this book from bogging down in statistics and jargon. By book's end the reader is unable to resist the heart of this compelling story, a plea for the conservation of habitat to keep these miraculous creatures on--or at least circling--the earth. --Maria Dolan

From Kirkus Reviews
A tidy and, for all its depth, nimble summation of current thinking on bird migration and attendant environmental themes from Weidensaul (Mountains of the Heart: A Natural History of the Appalachians, not reviewed). It is estimated that five billion birds take to the air on annual migrations. Most fly, many making those epic flights from the Arctic to South America. A few comedians, like the blue grouse, prefer to walk to their wintering venues and then back to their summerhouses come the spring. Weidensaul makes it clear from the outset that migration is a process of many partseach bird, after all, has its own agendaand he serves forth what is both known and conjectured. The book is broken up into three parts: the southern migration from North America in the autumn, an intermezzo that chronicles Weidensaul's Latin American travels during the migrants' wintering, and the return voyage north. Weidensaul ably blends specific behavioral material on individual species, atmospheric place notes as he traipses about following the birds, and theories concerning the hows and whys of migration, including navigation, the search for food, photoperiod triggers (though why he avoids discussion of chronobiology and circadian rhythms is a mystery), irruptions, and fallouts. His writing is full of affection for his subjectabout the elbow room needed by cerulean warblers, for instanceand his description of the tens of thousands of hawks he witnessed in a churning, updrafting kettle is astonishing, but he can also crank out a painfully empurpled item on occasion: birds on ``wings as fragile as a whisper,'' or ``aloft in the night air, migrant songbirds have the freedom of angels.'' Environmental considerations pepper the book, in particular the role of habitat loss and fragmentation on migratory success that requires ample food, safe havens, and quiet roosts, clean water, and a destination left untampered. Intelligent and broadly inquisitive, Weidensaul provides the kind of revelatory anecdote that allows lay birders (and any other reader) to ratchet their appreciation of the avian world up a significant notch. (maps) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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