A World On The Wing

Author : Scott Weidensaul
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393608913
Total Pages : 383 pages
Book Rating : 4.15/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds written by Scott Weidensaul and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize A Library Journal Best Science and Technology Book of the Year An exhilarating exploration of the science and wonder of global bird migration. In the past two decades, our understanding of the navigational and physiological feats that enable birds to cross immense oceans, fly above the highest mountains, or remain in unbroken flight for months at a stretch has exploded. What we’ve learned of these key migrations—how billions of birds circumnavigate the globe, flying tens of thousands of miles between hemispheres on an annual basis—is nothing short of extraordinary. Bird migration entails almost unfathomable endurance, like a sparrow-sized sandpiper that will fly nonstop from Canada to Venezuela—the equivalent of running 126 consecutive marathons without food, water, or rest—avoiding dehydration by "drinking" moisture from its own muscles and organs, while orienting itself using the earth’s magnetic field through a form of quantum entanglement that made Einstein queasy. Crossing the Pacific Ocean in nine days of nonstop flight, as some birds do, leaves little time for sleep, but migrants can put half their brains to sleep for a few seconds at a time, alternating sides—and their reaction time actually improves. These and other revelations convey both the wonder of bird migration and its global sweep, from the mudflats of the Yellow Sea in China to the remote mountains of northeastern India to the dusty hills of southern Cyprus. This breathtaking work of nature writing from Pulitzer Prize finalist Scott Weidensaul also introduces readers to those scientists, researchers, and bird lovers trying to preserve global migratory patterns in the face of climate change and other environmental challenges. Drawing on his own extensive fieldwork, in A World on the Wing Weidensaul unveils with dazzling prose the miracle of nature taking place over our heads.

Author : Scott Weidensaul
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 9780865475915
Total Pages : 436 pages
Book Rating : 4.11/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Living on the Wind written by Scott Weidensaul and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2000-04-15 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scott Weidensaul follows hawks over the Mexican coastal plains, Bar-tailed Godwits that hitchhike on gale winds 7,000 miles nonstop across the Pacific from Alaska to New Zealand, and the Myriad Songbirds whose numbers have dwindled so dramatically in recent years.

Author : Helen Macdonald
Publisher : Grove Press
ISBN 13 : 0802146694
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.94/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Vesper Flights written by Helen Macdonald and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times–bestselling author of H is for Hawk explores the human relationship to the natural world in this “dazzling” essay collection (Wall Street Journal). In Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved essays, along with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches to her own private vespers while trying to fall asleep. Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, Helen invites us into her most intimate experiences: observing the massive migration of songbirds from the top of the Empire State Building, watching tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary, seeking the last golden orioles in Suffolk’s poplar forests. She writes with heart-tugging clarity about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds’ nests, and the unexpected guidance and comfort we find when watching wildlife.

Author : Priyanka Kumar
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781890932442
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.42/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Take Wing and Fly Here written by Priyanka Kumar and published by . This book was released on 2013-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: J.K. is juggling a Big Year race - to see the most number of bird species in L.A. County in one year - with trying to complete a doctorate in physics. Rick, the president of the bird society, is nipping at J.K.'s heels in the Big Year count, always just two or three bird sightings behind him. As Trip Chair, J.K. is also under pressure to organize birding trips for the society. A Big Year is a "race against time," and as the year unfolds, J.K. finds it harder to concentrate on the last important paper he needs to publish to get his Ph.D. Yet he desires a postdoctoral position at Princeton, which would also keep his East-Coast girlfriend Anne Marie happy. With the Alpena Bird Society near bankruptcy as it stumbles into its Centennial year, and its members interested only in gawking at birds, Hospitality Queen Karen decides that the senseless killing of cowbirds in Joss Canyon, Alpena's last remaining wild land, must stop. Karen starts out with the bird society as an outlet for her ten-year-old son who has a birding mania, but as the novel progresses she's more and more frustrated by the society's lackadaisical approach to its Centennial and to bird conservation. That J.K.'s girlfriend is not a birder hasn't been a big problem so far, but as the Big Year draws to a close, the stresses on their relationship begin to show. J.K. counts on his physics supervisor to mentor his postdoctoral search, but his job prospects grow bleak. Rick's problem is that his wife Meg is suspicious of Karen's interest in Rick and jealous of the time he spends Big Year birding. Rick spends much energy on Machiavellian ruminations about how to indulge his passion for the Big Year while placating Meg. Karen does have a special fondness for Rick, but she's busy saving the cowbirds in Joss Canyon, which is now threatened by developers. Meanwhile J.K.'s "safety net" begins to dismantle until he discovers that he doesn't have the support structure to achieve the success he'd hoped for. Disappointed, J.K. retreats to the mountains. But he has one last promise to keep - to attend the bird society's Centennial.

Author : Rutendo Tavengerwei
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 1641290722
Total Pages : 217 pages
Book Rating : 4.22/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Hope is Our Only Wing written by Rutendo Tavengerwei and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After her journalist-father's mysterious death in 2008, fifteen-year-old Shamiso must leave England for boarding school in Zimbabwe, where she and Tanyaradzwa, who is fighting cancer, form an unexpected friendship.

Author : Benjamin A. Hodges
Publisher : Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN 13 : 9781557837400
Total Pages : 204 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Play that Changed My Life written by Benjamin A. Hodges and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2009 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Applause Books). What was the play that changed your life? What was the play that inspired you; that showed you something entirely new; that was so thrilling or surprising, breathtaking or poignant, that you were never the same? Nineteen of today's most gifted playwrights respond in this most revealing and personal book, published by Applause Books and presented by the American Theatre Wing, founder of The Tony Awards. From Edward Albee's 1935 visit to New York's Hippodrome Theatre to see Jimmy Durante (and an elephant) in Rodgers and Hart's Jumbo, to Diana Son's twelfth-grade field trip in 1983 to see Diane Venora play Hamlet at The Public Theater, from David Henry Hwang's seminal San Francisco encounter with Equus to a young Beth Henley's epiphany after seeing her mother in a "Green Bean Man costume," The Play That Changed My Life offers readers a unique peek into the theatrical influences of some of the nation's most important dramatists. The book is filled with tributes, memories, anecdotes and other insights that connect past to present and make this volume an instant "must have" for anyone who adores the theatre. Also in the book are pieces by David Auburn, Jon Robin Baitz, Nilo Cruz, Christopher Durang, Charles Fuller, A. R. Gurney, Tina Howe, David Ives, Donald Margulies, Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks, Sarah Ruhl, John Patrick Shanley, Regina Taylor, and Doug Wright, as well as an introduction by Paula Vogel. All together, the playwrights featured here have won more than 40 Tony Awards, Pulitzer Prizes, Obies, and MacArthur genius grants.

Author : Dr. David E. Alexander
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0199996776
Total Pages : 225 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book On the Wing written by Dr. David E. Alexander and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "On the Wing is the first book to take a comprehensive look at the evolution of flight in all four groups of powered flyers: insects, pterosaurs, birds, and bats."--Book jacket.

Author : Nancy Price Graff
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN 13 : 9780618535910
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.18/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Taking Wing written by Nancy Price Graff and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2005 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gus never imagined himself a parent at thirteen. But in the war-fraught summer of 1942, while living on his grandparents' Vermont farm, he adopts a clutch of orphaned duck eggs. Gus can relate to the foundlings, as he is apart from, and yearns for, his own family. One day Gus finds a young stranger standing over the incubating eggs. Gus doesn't know what to make of her, with her tattered clothing and strange accent, but soon the girl is helping to care for the newly hatched ducklings, and she and Gus become fast friends. Not everyone shares Gus's high opinion of Louise, whose poverty-stricken French-Canadian family is shunned by the townspeople. His attempt to help his friend and her family has some embarrassing consequences and he must make retribution if he is to keep Louise's friendship. Nancy Price Graff's fluid narrative and exceptional eye for detail follow Gus during a time of food rationing, Victory gardens, watching for enemy planes--and keeping his ducks from harm.

Author : James R. Hansen
Publisher : Texas A&M University Press
ISBN 13 : 9781585442430
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.37/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Bird Is on the Wing written by James R. Hansen and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The airplane ranks as one of history's most ingenious and phenomenal inventions--and surely one of the most world-shaking. How ideas about its aerodynamics first came together and how the science and technology evolved to forge the airplane into the revolutionary machine it became is the epic story James R. Hansen tells in The Bird Is on the Wing. Just as the airplane is a defining technology of the twentieth century, aerodynamics has been the defining element of the airplane. Hansen provides an engaging, easily understandable introduction to the role of aerodynamics in the design of such historic American aircraft as the DC-3, X-1, and 747. Recognizing the impact individuals have had on the development of the field, he conveys not only a history of aircraft technology, but also a collective biography of the scientists, engineers, and designers who created the airplanes. From da Vinci, whose understanding of what it took to fly was three centuries too early for practical use, to the invention of the airplane by the Wright brothers, Hansen explores the technological matrix from which aeronautical engineering emerged. He skillfully guides the reader through the development of such critical aerodynamic concepts as streamlining, flutter, laminar-flow airfoils, the mythical "sound barrier," variable-sweep wing, supersonic cruise, blended body, and much more. Hansen's explanation of how vocabulary and specifications were developed to fill the gap between the perceptions of pilots and the system of engineers will fascinate all those interested in how human beings have used aerodynamics to move among, and even beyond, birds on the wing.

Author : Charles Fergus
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1951627504
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Nighthawk's Wing written by Charles Fergus and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ** "Set in 1836, Fergus’s superior sequel . . . brings the period to life as he expertly melds setting and plot." Starred Publishers Weekly ** For Fans of Madeline Miller and Geraldine Brooks, and Historical Mysteries Involving Witchcraft, Second Sight, and Amish, Mennonite, and Pennsylvania Dutch Communities. In this thrilling second in the Gideon Stoltz Mystery series that Booklist called “An appealing debut that deserves a boost from enthusiastic hand-sellers,” it’s now 1836 in the fast-growing town of Adamant. The young Pennsylvania Dutch sheriff Gideon has a new case when a beautiful woman—suspected of witchcraft and residing in a nearby German settlement—is murdered. Suffering from a head injury after a fall off his horse, Gideon can’t recall anything that happened at the time of the woman’s death. As flashes of memory return, he realizes that not only did he know the victim, he was with her the night she died. As Gideon delves into the investigation, he must include himself in the list of suspects. When Gideon uncovers another dead body, he’s launched on a path to discover the truth, no matter the outcome. Gideon’s estranged wife, True, has her own reluctant methods of investigation. Gifted with unwelcome powers of second sight, True realizes that her husband’s life is in danger—and puts her own life on the line to save him. Nighthawk’s Wing unflinchingly examines the oppressed status of women in the 1830 and like the first in the series, it has “an atmospheric setting and a strong sense of place” (Library Journal). Nighthawk’s Wing beckons all readers who crave authenticity in early American historical novels, including those intrigued by witchcraft, spells, and visions. This compelling mystery glides along the edge between the gritty reality of the early 1800s and —a parallel world of spirits and haunted souls.