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"An exquisitely beautiful book ...These stories about birds are ultimately reflections on the curious nature of humanity itself"— Helen Macdonald, author of H Is for HawkThere is no denying that many people are crazy for birds. Packed with intriguing facts and exquisite and rare artwork,
Birdmania showcases an eclectic and fascinating selection of bird devotees who would do anything for their feathered friends.
In addition to well-known enthusiasts such as Aristotle, Charles Darwin, and Helen Macdonald, Brunner introduces readers to Karl Russ, the pioneer of "bird rooms", who had difficulty renting lodgings when landlords realized who he was; George Lupton, a wealthy Yorkshire lawyer, who commissioned the theft of uniquely patterned eggs every year for twenty years from the same unfortunate female guillemot who never had a chance to raise a chick; George Archibald, who performed mating dances for an endangered whooping crane called Tex to encourage her to lay; and Mervyn Shorthouse, who posed as a wheelchair-bound invalid to steal an estimated ten thousand eggs from the Natural History Museum in Tring.
As this book illustrates, people who love birds, whether they are amateurs or professionals, are as captivating and varied as the birds that give flight to their dreams.
List of contents
Foreword by Pete Dunne
What’s That Sound?
1/ Early Enthusiasts
2/ Bedazzlement
3/ Strutting Someone Else’s Stuff
4/ Laying the Groundwork for Science
5/ A Bird in the Hand
6/ Lost in the Mists of Time
7/ Championing Birds
8/ In the Company of Birds
9/ A Walk on the Wild Side
10/ Is Bird Love a One-Way Street?
11/ To Kill or Not to Kill?
12/ Flight Trackers
13/ The Lure of the Egg
14/ Focus on Feathers
15/ Mad for Bird Watching
16/ Tracking Dodos and Their Ilk
17/ Recording Nature
18/ Deadly Obsessions
19/ Fantasies of Flight
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Selected Bibliography and Sources for Quotes
List of Illustrations
Index of Birds
Index of People
About the author
Bernd Brunner's work has been published in
Lapham's Quarterly, the
Paris Review, the
Wall Street Journal Speakeasy,
Aeon, and the
Huffington Post, and he has lectured at New York's Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts and Culture, the Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley, and the Goethe Institute in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. He is the author of an eclectic array of books, including
Bears: A Brief History and
Inventing the Christmas Tree.
Pete Dunne is the author of numerous books about birds, including
Hawks in Flight. He is the vice president of the New Jersey Audubon Society and director of its Cape May Bird Observatory.
Jane Billinghurst’s career has been in book publishing in the UK, the US, and Canada, as an editor, publisher, writer, and translator. She is the translator of the international bestseller
The Hidden Life of Trees by German forester Peter Wohlleben.
Summary
A window on the world of birders—obsessive, passionate, quirky, and always interesting.
