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Reproduced from rare original worth $5,000, great nature classic covers 200 species of ducks. Exhaustive, unsurpassed study. Includes illustrations by Fuertes, Brooks, others. 74 full-color plates, 102 black-and-white plates, 117 maps. Clothbound. 4 volumes bound as two.
Australian predators of the sky are some of the most admired and the most despised of the bird world. Raptors are admired for their strength and independence, but despised for their depredations on livestock and favourite garden birds, while the owls are at once respected for their wisdom and watchfulness and feared for their mournful cries and association with darkness and ill-omen. The book begins with fascinating descriptions by award-winning natural history author Penny Olsen on the discovery and illustration of birds of prey in Australia, and their characteristics and ecology, followed by full-colour illustrations of each species by a variety of artists, accompanied by intriguing notes about the birds. Australian Predators of the Sky comprises over 200 striking paintings, lithographs and engravings of all 34 Australian species—25 diurnal birds of prey such as eagles, hawks and falcons, and nine owls such as hawk-owls and barn-owls.
What name could be a more apt description of Australia than ‘The Land of Parrots’, a name inspired by late sixteenth-century maps showing a southern region labelled ‘Psittacorum regio’? This beautiful book takes a close look at parrots in Australia, from the first published illustration of an Australian parrot—a Rainbow Lorikeet collected live on Cook’s 1770 voyage—to William T. Cooper’s twentieth-century watercolour of the elusive Night Parrot. With introductory essays by ornithologist Penny Olsen, Flocks of Colour covers two and a quarter centuries of discovery and illustration of Australia’s avifauna. It features a rich portfolio of images of all the Australian parrots, by various artists including John Gould, Edward Lear, Neville W. Cayley and William T. Cooper, selected from the collections of the National Library of Australia, The foreword is by Joseph Forshaw, a world expert on the parrot family.
We are accustomed to thinking of science and its findings as universal. After all, one atom of carbon plus two of oxygen yields carbon dioxide in Amazonia as well as in Alaska; a scientist in Bombay can use the same materials and techniques to challenge the work of a scientist in New York; and of course the laws of gravity apply worldwide. Why, then, should the spaces where science is done matter at all? David N. Livingstone here puts that question to the test with his fascinating study of how science bears the marks of its place of production. Putting Science in Its Place establishes the fundamental importance of geography in both the generation and the consumption of scientific knowledge, ...
Filmmaker Attenborough provides an introductory survey of the artistic representation of plants and animals through human history, beginning with Leonardo da Vinci's drawings and continuing on through the mid-1700s.
This book tells the fascinating success story of saving the flightless Woodhen of Lord Howe Island. This unique large rail, an iconic and highly endangered Australian bird, was at the very brink of extinction with just 15 individuals found in 1980, when bold and risky actions were taken to save it. The book begins with the discovery and ecology of Lord Howe Island. It then details the history of the Woodhen, its place among the rails and their evolution of flightlessness, the planning, implementation and trials, tribulations and successes of the captive breeding programme and the way in which the wild population recovered. The ecology, behaviour and breeding biology of this unique flightless island rail are also discussed. The text is accompanied by numerous photographs and drawings. This is a story of survival, yet the bird remains highly endangered as it is under constant potential threat, which could tip it over the brink and to extinction. The Woodhen provides gripping insights into the potential for both losing and saving vertebrate species. Winner of a 2014 Whitley Awards Certificate of Commendation for Historical Zoology.
The most comprehensive book to date about these two famously extinct birds.
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How an iconic bird’s final days exposed the reality of human-caused extinction The great auk is one of the most tragic and documented examples of extinction. A flightless bird that bred primarily on the remote islands of the North Atlantic, the last of its kind were killed in Iceland in 1844. Gísli Pálsson draws on firsthand accounts from the Icelanders who hunted the last great auks to bring to life a bygone age of Victorian scientific exploration while offering vital insights into the extinction of species. Pálsson vividly recounts how British ornithologists John Wolley and Alfred Newton set out for Iceland to collect specimens only to discover that the great auks were already gone. A...