"In this elegant narrative, celebrated naturalist Ted Floyd guides you through a year of becoming a better birder. Choosing 200 top avian species to teach key lessons, Floyd introduces a new, holistic approach to bird watching and shows how to use the tools of the 21st century to appreciate the natural world we inhabit together whether city, country or suburbs." -- From book jacket.

In The Private Eye we learn about snow geese through the eyes of Native people, scientists, artists, hunters, and farmers. Yup'ik Eskimo Charles Hunt harvests snow geese along the Yukon River delta each fall, continuing a subsistence way of life that has existed for millennia. Russian, Canadian, and US scientists track the movements of the geese each spring and fall, banding, sexing, counting, and precisely monitoring the activities of these beautiful birds. Robert Bateman provides an artist's view of nature and relates how his curiosity led him to join a camp set up at a remote nesting site. Mary Burns also talks to hunters, joining a party of them as they wait for their snow geese decoys to lure the real thing into a Westham Island field in the Fraser delta. To complete the experience she prepares snow geese for supper. As well, Burns travels around the Skagit River delta during a population survey and meets a dairy farmer who describes both the wild flocks that converge on his fields each spring and the snow geese he raises in pens. The Private Eye suggests that by acknowledging our many and varied connections with the natural world, we will have a better understanding of the human place in it.

The flock of greylag geese established by Konrad Lorenz in Austria in 1973 has become an influential model animal system and one of the few worldwide with complete life-history data spanning several decades. Based on the unique records of nearly 1000 free-living greylag geese, this is a synthesis of more than twenty years of behavioural research. It provides a comprehensive overview of a complex bird society, placing it in an evolutionary framework and drawing on a range of approaches, including behavioural (personality, aggression, pair bonding and clan formation), physiological, cognitive and genetic. With contributions from leading researchers, the chapters provide valuable insight into historic and recent research on the social behaviour of geese. All aspects of goose and bird sociality are discussed in the context of parallels with mammalian social organisation, making this a fascinating resource for anyone interested in integrative approaches to vertebrate social systems.

Young readers will find everything they want to know in these informative books about a wide variety of animals.

On a warm and golden afternoon, October 4, 1960, a Lockheed Electra jet turboprop carrying 72 souls took off from Logan Airport. Seconds later, the plane slammed into a flock of 10,000 starlings, and abruptly plummeted into Winthrop Harbor. The collision took 62 lives and gave rise to the largest rescue mobilization in Boston's history, which included civilians in addition to police, firefighters, skindivers, and Navy and Coast Guard air-sea rescue teams. Largely because of the quick action and good seamanship of Winthrop citizens, many of them boys in small boats, ten passengers survived what the Civil Aeronautics Board termed "a non-survivable crash." Using firsthand interviews with survivors of the crash, rescuers, divers, aeronautics experts, and ornithologists, as well as a wide range of primary source material, Kalafatas foregrounds the story of the crash and its aftermath to anchor a broader inquiry into developments in the aeronautics industry, the increase in the number of big birds in the skies of North America, and the increasing danger of "bird strikes." Along the way he looks into interesting historical sidelights such as the creation of Logan Airport, the transformation of Boston's industrial base to new technologies, and the nature of journalistic investigations in the early 1960s. The book is a rare instance when an author can simultaneously write about a fascinating historical event and a clear and present danger today. Kalafatas calls for and itemizes solutions that protect both birds and the traveling public.

A hardcover bestseller now in paperback presents a management program that encourages employee leadership--which today's companies must have more of if they are to survive the coming decades.

"Zita just can't seem to march to the same beat as the rest of the geese, but before long, she realizes, as do the other barnyard animals, that her own special rhythm is just right"--