China covers about 7% of the earth's land surface and encompasses a hugely diverse range of habitats. As a result, it boasts a rich and diverse avifauna, including some of the most spectacular and fascinating birds to be found anywhere in the world. Building on the enormous popularity and reputation of the original A Field Guide to the Birds of China (2000), John MacKinnon's fully updated and refreshed work remains a truly comprehensive, taxonomically modern, fully illustrated, and authoritative field guide. 1484 bird species are richly illustrated in 164 annotated colour plates, which are closely integrated with up-to-date colour distribution maps, QR codes providing easy access to birdcalls, IUCN Red List status indicators and new, concise descriptions. These descriptions feature key observations as well as conveying crucial changes to species distributions resulting from climate change and landscape transformation. Guide to the Birds of China will appeal to an international and growing audience of professional and amateur ornithologists and birding enthusiasts, academic researchers and students, wildlife photographers, and conservationists.

A charming true story of an eccentric Sinophile Englishman and his Chinese tree-change. Mark Kitto hits the big time as a publisher. But on the verge of signing a groundbreaking deal, the Communist Party takes over his business. Rejecting the corporate world, he persuades his Chinese wife to retreat to Moganshan, a beautiful mountain village.

The people of Xingtai were fortunate to have had Peggy Bickford teach them about the English language and American life, just as we are fortunate to have her fine book The Cuckoo Comes at Harvest to educate us about life in the rural town of Xingtai, China. This evenhanded description of a small Chinese town offers an interesting contrast to life in the metropolitan Chinese cities most commonly pictured. Xingtai is typical of places where the masses of Chinese people live and this is how they live. In addition to the lucid text, the 42 illustrations give an intimate view of living and working conditions in contemporary inland China and a sympathetic look at the people. This valuable and worthwhile book is a must for anyone interested in modern China.

"The avifauna of China include a total of close to 1,500 species, of which 60 are endemic. More than 100 species are globally threatened. This new field guide, published in China by Chinese National Geography, treats all species, illustrating every one using 4,000 individual images. Each species has identification text and a distribution map. It is, in every way, a modern-style field guide and will fill a void for birders within and outside China"--

Risk is a major reason that companies fail in, or fail to enter, China. Packed with case studies, this unique book demonstrates how correctly applied due diligence can not only reduce business risk in China, but also provide excellent business intelligence to support negotiations and business relationships.

This fascinating study describes the natural histories of these brood parasites and examines many of the exciting questions they raise about the evolution of cheating and the arms race between parasites and their prey. Brood parasites fill their armoury with adaptations including exquisite egg mimicry, rapid laying, ejection of host eggs, murder of host young, chick mimicry and manipulative begging behaviour: ploys shown by recent research to have evolved in response to host defence behaviour or through competition among the parasites themselves. While many host species appear defenceless, accepting parasite eggs quite unlike their own, many are more discriminating against odd-looking eggs and some have evolved the ability to discriminate against odd-looking chicks as well. How is this arms race conducted? Will defenceless hosts develop defences in time, or are there constraints which limit the evolution and perfection of host defences? And why are so few species obliged only to lay eggs in host nests? Have host defences limited the success of brood parasitism, or is it in fact much more common than we suspect, but occurring mainly when birds parasitize the nest of their own kind? All of these puzzles are examined in descriptions of the natural history of each of the groups of parasites in turn. Here is a book with wide appeal, both to amateur naturalists fascinated by this most singular and macabre of behaviours and by ornithologists and ecologists interested in the evolution of ecology and behaviour. The story takes us from the classic field work by pioneer ornithologists such as Edgar Chance, Stuart Baker, Herbert Friedmann and others, through to the experimental field work and molecular techniques of today's leading scientists. We visit brood parasites in Europe, Asia, Japan, Africa, Australasia, and North and South America, to look at some of the world's most interesting birds and some of biology's most interesting questions, many of which still beg answers from ornithologists in the future. Brilliant illustrations by David Quinn illuminate the species discussed, showing many behaviours never before illustrated and conveying the thrill of watching these astonishing birds in the wild.