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Posts Tagged ‘fauna’

After a season of travel, it’s beautiful to be back home where a holiday morning can be spent in my easy chair with some good books and a pair of binoculars to oversee my backyard, where my birds are enjoying the overdue filling of their feeders. (more…)

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Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

The Peterson Field Guides are something of an institution among birdwatchers. ‘Remember that silver Mercedes that slid past you in the passing lane yesterday on the way home? Not too fast, certainly not slow. ‘Just smooth as it gets and all class? (more…)

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Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

Two years ago my family and I moved from Costa Rica to Indianapolis. From one of the world’s great bird paradises to an endless succession of corn field bejeweled with a gray ring road.

Or so we thought. (more…)

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Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

The fact that you’re reading this review indicates that you already know that bats are good guys, not bad guys. ‘Nuff said.

Next thing, you’d probably like to have a bunch (like paper towels at Costco, they only come in quantities) in your yard. OK, then start with this Stokes Guide. (more…)

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Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

Kricher’s Neotropical Companion is not the kind of ‘field-guide-for-dummies’ that many of us depend on to find our way around Central and South America’s flora and fauna. Rather, it’s the next step for people who’ve become familiar with that kind of guide and want to understand at a deeper and occasionally more abstract level why the natural life around them is what it is. (more…)

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Birds of Thailand is the reason the prestige university press and its zero-tolerance approach to schlock products exists. Princeton University Press has done itself proud with this condensed and focused version of author Robson’s Birds of Southeast Asia. (more…)

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Do you want the good news first, or the bad news?

Le’ts start with the bad: The Birds of Australia. A book of identification is no longer available in its original hardcover format with its beautifully illustrated birds and its handy bird-by-bird location map. (more…)

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Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

For about 150 pages, author John Grogan tells rambling dog stories about his Labrador named Marley, leaving his reader to wonder what all the fuss is about with this best-selling book. (more…)

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Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

Twenty years ago the air above the narrow street outside our little row house in Costa Rica used to teem with swallows dashing about in the later afternoon coolness. I loved to watch their antics, finding in their effortless twists and turns a vicarious agility.

When we moved house and the swallows were no longer part of our end-of-day joys, I knew that I must someday remedy this situation by having a Purple Martin house that would persuade the similar martins to take us into their company. (more…)

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Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

This finely produced University of Texas hardback is not your typical off-the-rack ‘What’s that bird?’ book.

What bird book do you know that begins with such picturesque scene-setting: ‘It is 6:30 a.m. in late April: a strange assortment of liquid chirps, chortles, and muffled yodels threads the dimness about to be burnished. In a nearby yaupon, a cardinal hammers bellow chinks into the still-black earth. Overhead, Purple Martins lance dawn—expressing their invisible presence through these baubles of sound that hang, as do the minstrels, in the dew-rich air.’
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