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Informationen zum Autor By Steven Hilty Klappentext The guide to neotropical bird behavior that picks up where field guides leave off.Why are tropical birds like parrots and quetzals so much more colorful than those in more temperate climates? How can a vulture soaring thousands of feet above the canopy spot a dead rodent no bigger than a mouse on the rainforest floor? What permits sparrow-sized antbirds to not only survive but to thrive among relentless hordes of army ants that devour every other living thing in their path?Steven Hilty has led birding tours to the American Tropics for decades. By providing answers to the hundreds of questions asked by participants of these expeditions, Hilty has produced a natural history of the bird life of the New World Tropics that is at once practical, accurate, and as endlessly fascinating as the species whose lives it reveals.Birds of Tropical America was published by Chapters Publishing in 1994 and went out of print in 1997. UT Press is pleased to reissue it with a new epilogue and updated references. Zusammenfassung The guide to neotropical bird behavior that picks up where field guides leave off. Inhaltsverzeichnis AcknowledgmentsDreams Meet Reality in the American Tropics: A PrefaceAvian Addresses: Structure of a RainforestBird Community Tropical Diversity: Why So Many Bird Species in Tropical Forests?Ghosts of Rainforests Past: Amazonian BiogeographyHigh-Andean Genealogy: Unraveling Ice Age SecretsTropical Travelers: Migration Within the TropicsThe Clubbiest of Clubs: Life in a Mixed-Species FlockAntbirds Don't Eat Ants: Rhythms and Rituals at Ant SwarmsWho Is the Fairest? Colorfulness in Tropical and Temperate BirdsFruit of the Land: Birds, Fruit and Seed DispersalAnatomy of a Fruit Eater: Foraging Tactics of Fruit-Eating BirdsA Good Song and Dance: Alternative Life-Styles of Manakins and CotingasTerritories or Traplines? Hummingbird Foraging StrategiesCold Reality: Highland HummingbirdsSallying Forth: A Flycatcher BaedekerFinding a Needle in the Haystack: A Vulture's View of ParadiseThe Costs and Benefits of Growing Old: Life and Love Among the CaciquesSound Strategies: Sopranos Should Sing From the TreetopsPerilous Paradise: Tropical River IslandsIn Search of a Season: When Do Tropical Birds Nest?EpilogueBibliographyIndex...
About the author
Steven Hilty is a professional guide with Victor Emanuel Nature Tours, the largest international birding tour organizer in the world. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona and is a Research Associate at the University of Kansas Museum of Natural History.
