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Behold the cormorant: silent, still, cruciform, and brooding; flashing, soaring, quick as a snake. Evolution has crafted the only creature on Earth that can migrate the length of a continent, dive and hunt deep underwater, perch comfortably on a branch or a wire, walk on land, climb up cliff faces, feed on thousands of different species, and live beside both fresh and salt water in a vast global range of temperatures and altitudes, often in close proximity to man. Long a symbol of gluttony, greed, bad luck, and evil, the cormorant has led a troubled existence in human history, myth, and literature. The birds have been prized as a source of mineral wealth in Peru, hunted to extinction in the Arctic, trained by the Japanese to catch fish, demonized by Milton in Paradise Lost, and reviled, despised, and exterminated by sport and commercial fishermen from Israel to Indianapolis, Toronto to Tierra del Fuego. In The DevilÕs Cormorant, Richard King takes us back in time and around the world to show us the history, nature, ecology, and economy of the worldÕs most misunderstood waterfowl.
P. Berthold and E. Gwinnd Bird migration is an intriguing aspect of the living world - so much so that it has been investigated for as long, and as thoroughly, as almost any other natural phenomenon. Aristotle, who can count as the founder of scientific ornithology, paid very close attention to the migrations of the birds he ob served, but it was not until the reign of Friedrich II, in the first half of the 13th century, that reliable data began to be obtained. From then on, the data base grew rapidly. Systematic studies of bird migration were introduced when the Vogelwarte Rossitten was founded, as the first ornithological biological observation station in the world (see first chapter "In M...
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