|
The Singing Life of Birds: The Art and Science of Listening to
Birdsong, Donald Kroodsma Listen to birds sing as you’ve never listened before, as the
world-renowned birdsong expert Donald Kroodsma takes you on personal journeys of
discovery and intrigue. Read stories of wrens and robins, thrushes and
thrashers, warblers and whip-poor-wills, bluebirds and cardinals, and many more
bird. Learn how each acquires its songs, how songs vary from bird to bird and
place to place, how some birds' singing is especially beautiful or ceaseless or
complex, how some do not sing at all, how the often quiet female has the last
word, and why. Hear a baby wren and the author’s own daughter babble as each
learns its local dialect. Listen to the mockingbird by night and by day and
count how many different songs he can sing. Marvel at the exquisite harmony in
the duet of a wood thrush as he uses his two voice boxes to accompany himself.
Feel the extraordinary energy in the songs just before sunrise as dawn’s first
light sweeps across this singing planet. Hear firsthand the unmistakable
evidence that there are not one but two species of marsh wrens and two species
of winter wrens in North America.
Learn not only to hear but to see birds sing in the form of
sonagrams, as these visual images dance across the pages while you listen to the
accompanying CD. Using your trained ears and eyes, you can begin your own
journeys of discovery. Listen anew to birds in your backyard and beyond,
exploring the singing minds of birds as they tell all that they know. Join
Kroodsma not only in identifying but in identifying with singing birds,
connecting with nature’s musicians in a whole new way.
448
pages, 100 black & white illustrations, 7 x 9 inches
0-618-40568-2 The
Singing Life of Birds book & CD $28.00
|
