| Birds -- Migration |
| Migratory birds |
| Flyways |
| Avian flyways |
| Bird flight paths |
| Bird flyways |
| Bird migration corridors |
| Bird migration routes |
| Flight paths, Bird |
| Migration corridors, Bird |
| Migration routes, Bird |
| Migratory bird flyways |
Available:
Library | Shelf Number | Shelf Location | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Bridgewater Public Library | 598 WEIDENSAUL 2021 | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Dartmouth - Southworth | 598.156 WEI 2021 | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Fairhaven-Millicent | 598 WEI 2021 | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Foxboro - Boyden Library | 598.1568 WEIDENSAUL | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Lakeville Public Library | 598.156 WEI | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Mansfield Public Library | 598.156 WEID | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Mattapoisett Free Public Library | 598.156 WEI 2021 | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Middleborough Public Library | 598.1568 WEI | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... New Bedford Free Public Library | 598.1568 WEI 2021 | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Norfolk Public Library | 598.15 WEID | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Pembroke Public Library | 589.156 WEI | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Plympton Public Library | 598.156 WEI | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Raynham Library | 598.156 WEI | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Seekonk Public Library | 598.1568 WEIDENSAUL | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Westport Free Public Library | 598.156 WEI 2021 | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
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.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
"In the past two decades we've realized how badly we have underestimated the simple physical abilities of birds," suggests naturalist Weidensaul (Living on the Wind) in this remarkable look at global bird migration. "The world is changing around us," he writes, and migrating birds are "our best and most compelling window" into those changes. To understand the "complexity of migratory ecology," Weidensaul takes readers to Alaska's Denali National Park, where he catches and tags thrushes; coastal Jiangsu Province in China, a critical way station for migratory shorebirds; and Cyprus, an island in the eastern Mediterranean "at the nexus of great migratory flyways connecting central Europe to Africa and the Middle East" that's notorious for illegal bird trapping. Along the way, Weidensaul describes tracking technology, such as outdated radiotelemetry, and geolocators that weigh "barely half a gram." He notes with urgency the consequences of climate change and urban development on migration patterns (brightly lit skyscrapers disorient migrating birds) while maintaining a sense of wonder about the birds' efforts and abilities: "a migratory bird's ability to traverse thousands of miles is perhaps the greatest physiological feat of all." Bird enthusiasts and fans of nature writing shouldn't miss this. Photos. (Mar.)
Guardian Review
Among the mysteries of migration unfolded by the renowned natural history writer Scott Weidensaul in his new book is the song of the male red knot. This rises in reflection of its expanding genitalia - "shrunken and all but functionless" during the months it spends in Australia, then swelling as it flies north towards its Siberian breeding grounds, "ballooning to almost 1,000 times their minute winter size" and pumping testosterone through the bloodstream with such force that "what had been a mild, occasional itch to sing during the weeks of a springtime stopover on the mudflats of the Yellow Sea would become a constant hormonal compulsion in the Arctic". He tells an amazing tale of bar-tailed godwits, some of which make "the longest non-stop migration known" south - up to 7,500 miles from the Arctic to New Zealand in a continuous, feverous flight lasting eight or more days. They gather the strength for it by gorging themselves on marine worms on the tidal flats of the Alaskan peninsula, doubling their weight within two weeks and making themselves "so obese that they jiggle when they walk". What happens next is nothing short of a superhero comic scene. Digestive organs "shrink and atrophy". Pectoral muscles, heart and lungs all double in size until the godwit is ready for flight. Code-switching, the alternation between languages or speech patterns that is the most natural survival instinct of so many a human migrant, has nothing on the mechanics of metamorphosis that have evolved across our avian counterparts. I'm not a birder, but Weidensaul persuades me that I could be, and that a greater appreciation of the movement and behaviour of migratory birds might bring me into closer contact with what it means to be a living thing on Earth. How is it that these animals, even at a first attempt, can navigate a hemisphere with such unreal precision? The answer, as Weidensaul relates, might lie in the phenomenon of quantum entanglement with the planet, as wavelengths of blue light excite and split electrons between the eye of the bird and the air they cut through - electron pairs that remain connected, in spite of distance, creating a map of the world in the eye of the bird. A master storyteller who is also profoundly involved in scientific ornithology, Weidensaul is an active field researcher and has authored more than 30 books including Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds, which was a Pulitzer prize finalist in 2000. These years, he informs us, have also been an era of unprecedented boom in the knowledge we possess about the life of migratory birds, driven by new technology, including satellite transmitters, radar systems, crowdsourcing and machine learning - computers that can "listen to the skies". Reflection of that dynamic interplay - between technology and our understanding of the natural world - is very much the language of Weidensaul's own song, as he sets about revealing the inner workings of research institutes and conservation centres from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology to the guesthouses of Pangti, in rural Nagaland, north-east India. Weidensaul communicates so much joy in the sheer act of witnessing and such exhilaration in the advances of the science behind what he sees, that we are slow to grasp the extent of the ecological crisis that he outlines. Billions of migratory birds, he tells us, have in recent years been "lost to habitat destruction, pesticides, building collisions, cats". And now the climate crisis - "the big enchilada" he calls it - threatens to disrupt all previous certainties, including prevailing winds, rainfall, habitats and food supplies, that bird migration relies on. "Migrants," he says, "those that already exist in a fragile balance between distance, time, physiological ability, seasonal resources, and predictable weather", emerge as a critical frontline in this age of environmental catastrophe. For all the doom he describes, however, Weidensaul has no real gift for tragedy. Each one of his stories, from the rehabilitation of Amur falcons in north-eastern India to the adaptation of Eurasian reed warblers in the face of rising global temperatures, emerges as a celebration of positive human behaviour: patient observation, indefatigable problem-solving and conviviality, which, like the routes of the birds he describes, extends far beyond the borders of our nation states, connecting researchers, conservationists and local communities around the world in the task of reckoning with our abundance before it's too late. What emerges is an emphatic statement of confidence in nature's resilience - a vision of nature as a force that we and our science are irrefutably a part of.
Kirkus Review
Bird researcher and writer Weidensaul unpacks the state of bird migration research and conservation efforts. Bird migration is a wonder, a natural force that pushes small, fragile creatures to fly immense distances with both speed and tenacity. In his latest contribution to the subject, the Pulitzer Prize finalist provides a wide-ranging investigation into migration, including the success stories as well as current problems and those on the horizon: climate change, which "is reshaping every single thing about migration"; habitat loss and forest fragmentation, "a serious danger to…migrant songbirds"; rat infestation; and hunting--especially after "wild meat became a status symbol rather than a mere source of protein." As in many of his previous books, Weidensaul is a peerless guide, sharing his intoxicating passion and decadeslong experience with countless bird species all over the world. Another pleasing aspect of the narrative is the author's fine-line descriptions of the often remote landscapes through which he has traveled and the vest-pocket character portraits of his birding comrades. Each of the chapters covers one or more species and locales--e.g., frigatebirds in the Galápagos, Amur falcons in China and Mongolia, whimbrels on Virginia's Eastern Shore, more than 160 species of birds in Denali National Park--but the author also ventures into other areas, such as a bird's "magnetic orientation" ability and the "genetic road map" that allows them to embark on a successful migration. Of course, significant problems abound: the disappearance of birds' habitat preferences and favored diets; the traditional trapping of songbirds in the Mediterranean for consumption (according to one estimate in 2016, "trappers were killing between 1.3 million and 3.2 million birds annually in Cyprus, making this small island one of the worst places…for this slaughter"); and the disorientation of urban lights. As the author notes, because of the variety and number of routes, habitats, and species, their protection will require a vigorous global approach. Another winner from Weidensaul that belongs in every birder's library. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Naturalist Scott Weidensaul has written a number of titles, including The First Frontier (2012) and Living on the Wind (1999), one of several books about birds, which continue to fascinate him, particularly their migration. Beginning with a tale of tagging grey-cheeked thrushes in Alaska, and being charged by an angry mother grizzly, he brings us along as he discovers how much scientists have learned about avian migration in the last few decades. We have learned to look at migratory birds not as residents of one place, but as residents of their whole range, including stopover resting sites and their wintering grounds. To keep migratory bird populations healthy, the flocks and and the all the places they land must be protected. As Weidensaul travels the world, working with scientists as they study shorebirds in China's Yellow Sea and frigatebirds in the Galapagos, use a transcontinental array of radio receivers to track migrants carrying tiny radios, and band exhausted migrants in Alabama, he explains such discoveries as how birds navigate (using magnetism coupled with brain chemistry) and how they sleep on the wing (one half of the brain rests at a time). Many mysteries of bird life and migration are revealed in this compelling and illuminating in-the-field narrative complete with maps and photographs.
Library Journal Review
Award-winning author and natural historian Weidensaul (Living on the Wind) professes and demonstrates reverence for migratory birds in this book. Impelled by genetics and sent on by the changing seasons, migratory birds tenaciously endure migrations of thousands, even tens of thousands, of miles, the author explains. Weidensaul participated in some of the most advanced research and observation of species of these birds across the globe. He describes the incredible migrations and physiological changes of swifts, thrushes, warblers, whimbrels, owls, and other birds, many in obscure and unusual places. In the last two decades, technological advances in avian tracking equipment, Big Data, and the explosion of average citizens' observation/recording of bird movements have led to significant advances in our knowledge of bird migration. Based on recent scientific research and his own research and bird observations, Weidensaul vividly explains how humans, through destruction of habitat and global warming, are threatening many bird species populations. VERDICT Each chapter on the different bird species and migration experiences will vibrantly inform readers about the habits of migratory birds--or at least what we know about them so far. Besides appealing to birders, this book will also engage those interested in natural or environmental history.--Mark Jones, Mercantile Lib., Cincinnati
Table of Contents
| Prologue | p. 1 |
| 1 Spoonies | p. 25 |
| 2 Quantum Leap | p. 64 |
| 3 We Used to Think | p. 91 |
| 4 Big Data, Big Trouble | p. 126 |
| 5 Hangover | p. 157 |
| 6 Tearing up the Calendar | p. 187 |
| 7 Aguiluchos Redux | p. 222 |
| 8 Off the Shelf | p. 247 |
| 9 To Hide from God | p. 278 |
| 10 Eninum | p. 311 |
| Epilogue | p. 341 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 349 |
| References | p. 353 |
| Index | p. 375 |