The Singing Life of Birds

The Singing Life of Birds
Author: Donald Kroodsma
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 501
Release: 2015-02-17
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0547344872

Listen to birds sing as you’ve never listened before, as the world-renowned birdsong expert Donald Kroodsma takes you on personal journeys of discovery and intrigue. Read stories of wrens and robins, thrushes and thrashers, warblers and whip-poor-wills, bluebirds and cardinals, and many more bird. Learn how each acquires its songs, how songs vary from bird to bird and place to place, how some birds' singing is especially beautiful or ceaseless or complex, how some do not sing at all, how the often quiet female has the last word, and why. Hear a baby wren and the author’s own daughter babble as each learns its local dialect. Listen to the mockingbird by night and by day and count how many different songs he can sing. Marvel at the exquisite harmony in the duet of a wood thrush as he uses his two voice boxes to accompany himself. Feel the extraordinary energy in the songs just before sunrise as dawn’s first light sweeps across this singing planet. Hear firsthand the unmistakable evidence that there are not one but two species of marsh wrens and two species of winter wrens in North America. Learn not only to hear but to see birds sing in the form of sonagrams, as these visual images dance across the pages while you listen to the accompanying audio. Using your trained ears and eyes, you can begin your own journeys of discovery. Listen anew to birds in your backyard and beyond, exploring the singing minds of birds as they tell all that they know. Join Kroodsma not only in identifying but in identifying with singing birds, connecting with nature’s musicians in a whole new way. Please note: this ebook includes embedded audio files. You will only be able to access these files from a device that supports embedded audio.


Birdsong by the Seasons

Birdsong by the Seasons
Author: Donald E. Kroodsma
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2009
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9780618753369

Birdsong by the Seasons is a celebration of birdsong from January through December. The stories begin with a pileated woodpecker on New Year's Day; they unfold through the year, covering limpkins and scrub-jays in February in Florida, prairie birds in May, Scarlet Tanagers in July, and ending with a chorus of singing birds in Massachusetts just before Christmas. Readers get inside the mind of a scientist and see how answers only lead to more questions. Kroodsma provides a unique experience: with his gentle guidance, the pairing of sonagrams with the audio CDs make birdsong accessible and fascinating.


Listening to a Continent Sing

Listening to a Continent Sing
Author: Donald Kroodsma
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2018-05-08
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 069118089X

A birdsong expert's poignant and beautifully illustrated memoir of a bicycle journey across America with his son Join birdsong expert Donald Kroodsma on a ten-week, ten-state bicycle journey as he travels with his son from the Atlantic to the Pacific, lingering and listening to our continent sing as no one has before. On remote country roads, over terrain vast and spectacular, from dawn to dusk and sometimes through the night, you will gain a deep appreciation for the natural symphony of birdsong many of us take for granted. Come along and marvel at how expressive these creatures are as Kroodsma leads you west across nearly five thousand miles—at a leisurely pace that enables a deep listen. Listening to a Continent Sing is also a guided tour through the history of a young nation and the geology of an ancient landscape, and an invitation to set aside the bustle of everyday life to follow one's dreams. It is a celebration of flowers and trees, rocks and rivers, mountains and prairies, clouds and sky, headwinds and calm, and of local voices and the people you will meet along the way. It is also the story of a father and son deepening their bond as they travel the slow road together from coast to coast. Beautifully illustrated throughout with drawings of birds and scenes and featuring QR codes that link to audio birdsong, this poignant and insightful book takes you on a travel adventure unlike any other—accompanied on every leg of your journey by birdsong.


All the Birds, Singing

All the Birds, Singing
Author: Evie Wyld
Publisher: Pantheon
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2014-04-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307907775

From one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists, a stunningly insightful, emotionally powerful new novel about an outsider haunted by an inescapable past: a story of loneliness and survival, guilt and loss, and the power of forgiveness. Jake Whyte is living on her own in an old farmhouse on a craggy British island, a place of ceaseless rain and battering wind. Her disobedient collie, Dog, and a flock of sheep are her sole companions, which is how she wants it to be. But every few nights something—or someone—picks off one of the sheep and sounds a new deep pulse of terror. There are foxes in the woods, a strange boy and a strange man, and rumors of an obscure, formidable beast. And there is also Jake’s past, hidden thousands of miles away and years ago, held in the silences about her family and the scars that stripe her back—a past that threatens to break into the present. With exceptional artistry and empathy, All the Birds, Singing reveals an isolated life in all its struggles and stubborn hopes, unexpected beauty, and hard-won redemption. This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.


Singing Bird

Singing Bird
Author: Roisin McAuley
Publisher: Crux Publishing Ltd
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2015-04-21
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1909979171

Twenty-seven years after she adopted her baby in Ireland, Lena Molloy receives a call from the nun who set up the adoption. Sister Monica claims that she wants merely to tie up loose ends in her old age, but Lena becomes frightened that something more threatening lies behind the call, and she sets off on a journey to Ireland, with her best friend, to find her daughter's birth parents.


The Birds in My Life

The Birds in My Life
Author: The Supreme Master Ching Hai
Publisher: The Supreme Master Ching Hai Publishing Co Ltd.
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2007-06-01
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9866895149

In this beautifully illustrated book, Master Ching Hai lovingly writes about each one of Her feathered friend's unique biography, complemented by life-like photographs and captions filled with amusing telepathic exchanges between Master and bird. As one views these colorful vibrant beings among the trees and flowers, singing their love for God, one feels a soulful retreat from the daily grind of the urban jungle. Simply opening this book of Master Ching Hai, instantly brings forth a magical forest animated with birds and flowers. Twenty-three beautiful feathered beings, frequently seen nestling in the Master's arms, brings Her endless joy. She is often moved by their words and actions and is greatly inspired by them as well. Master Ching Hai pleasantly surprises the reader by revealing that inside these God's creations are very highly developed souls whose love know no boundaries.


The Backyard Birdsong Guide

The Backyard Birdsong Guide
Author: Donald Kroodsma
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2008-04-23
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9780811863421

Teaches about the habitat, behaviors, appearance, and songs of seventy-five Eastern and Central North American birds, and includes basic birdwatching guidelines and audio samples.


What It's Like to Be a Bird

What It's Like to Be a Bird
Author: David Allen Sibley
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2020-04-14
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0525520295

The bird book for birders and nonbirders alike that will excite and inspire by providing a new and deeper understanding of what common, mostly backyard, birds are doing—and why: "Can birds smell?"; "Is this the same cardinal that was at my feeder last year?"; "Do robins 'hear' worms?" "The book's beauty mirrors the beauty of birds it describes so marvelously." —NPR In What It's Like to Be a Bird, David Sibley answers the most frequently asked questions about the birds we see most often. This special, large-format volume is geared as much to nonbirders as it is to the out-and-out obsessed, covering more than two hundred species and including more than 330 new illustrations by the author. While its focus is on familiar backyard birds—blue jays, nuthatches, chickadees—it also examines certain species that can be fairly easily observed, such as the seashore-dwelling Atlantic puffin. David Sibley's exacting artwork and wide-ranging expertise bring observed behaviors vividly to life. (For most species, the primary illustration is reproduced life-sized.) And while the text is aimed at adults—including fascinating new scientific research on the myriad ways birds have adapted to environmental changes—it is nontechnical, making it the perfect occasion for parents and grandparents to share their love of birds with young children, who will delight in the big, full-color illustrations of birds in action. Unlike any other book he has written, What It's Like to Be a Bird is poised to bring a whole new audience to David Sibley's world of birds.


Bird Songs

Bird Songs
Author: Les Beletsky
Publisher: becker&mayer! Books
Total Pages: 371
Release: 2018-10-16
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0760363269

In Bird Songs, ornithologist Les Beletsky profiles 250 birds alongside colorful illustrations, and includes a digital audio player that provides the corresponding song for each of the 250 birds. Drawing from the collection of the world-renowned Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Bird Songs presents the most notable North American birds—including the rediscovered ivory-billed woodpecker—in a stunning format. Renowned ornithologist Les Beletsky provides a succinct description of each of the 250 birds profiled, with an emphasis on their distinctive songs. Lavish full-color illustrations accompany each account, while a sleek, built-in digital audio player holds 250 corresponding songs and calls. In his foreword, North American bird expert and distinguished natural historian Jon L. Dunn shares insights gained from a lifetime of passionate study. Complete with the most up-to-date and scientifically accurate information, Bird Songs is the first book to capture the enchantment of these beautiful birds in words, pictures, and song.