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Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Uncovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence--and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process

Author: Irene M. Pepperberg
ASIN : 0061672475
Sales Rank : 594
Studio : Collins
Binding : Hardcover
EAN : 9780061672477
ISBN : 0061672475
Number Of Pages : 240
Publication Date : December 01, 2008
Release Date : December 28, 2008
Publisher : Collins
Manufacturer : Collins
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Collins

Product Description

On September 6, 2007, an African Grey parrot named Alex died prematurely at age thirty-one. His last words to his owner, Irene Pepperberg, were "You be good. I love you."

What would normally be a quiet, very private event was, in Alex's case, headline news. Over the thirty years they had worked together, Alex and Irene had become famous—two pioneers who opened an unprecedented window into the hidden yet vast world of animal minds. Alex's brain was the size of a shelled walnut, and when Irene and Alex first met, birds were not believed to possess any potential for language, consciousness, or anything remotely comparable to human intelligence. Yet, over the years, Alex proved many things. He could add. He could sound out words. He understood concepts like bigger, smaller, more, fewer, and none. He was capable of thought and intention. Together, Alex and Irene uncovered a startling reality: We live in a world populated by thinking, conscious creatures.

The fame that resulted was extraordinary. Yet there was a side to their relationship that never made the papers. They were emotionally connected to one another. They shared a deep bond far beyond science. Alex missed Irene when she was away. He was jealous when she paid attention to other parrots, or even people. He liked to show her who was boss. He loved to dance. He sometimes became bored by the repetition of his tests, and played jokes on her. Sometimes they sniped at each other. Yet nearly every day, they each said, "I love you."

Alex and Irene stayed together through thick and thin—despite sneers from experts, extraordinary financial sacrifices, and a nomadic existence from one univer­sity to another. The story of their thirty-year adventure is equally a landmark of scientific achievement and of an unforgettable human-animal bond.

Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl

Author: Stacey O'Brien
ASIN : 1416551735
Sales Rank : 775
Studio : Free Press
Binding : Hardcover
EAN : 9781416551737
ISBN : 1416551735
Number Of Pages : 240
Publication Date : December 19, 2008
Publisher : Free Press
Manufacturer : Free Press
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Free Press

Product Description

On Valentine's Day 1985, biologist Stacey O'Brien first met a four-day-old baby barn owl -- a fateful encounter that would turn into an astonishing 19-year saga. With nerve damage in one wing, the owlet's ability to fly was forever compromised, and he had no hope of surviving on his own in the wild. O'Brien, a young assistant in the owl laboratory at Caltech, was immediately smitten, promising to care for the helpless owlet and give him a permanent home. Wesley the Owl is the funny, poignant story of their dramatic two decades together.

With both a tender heart and a scientist's eye, O'Brien studied Wesley's strange habits intensively and first-hand -- and provided a mice-only diet that required her to buy the rodents in bulk (28,000 over the owl's lifetime). As Wesley grew, she snapped photos of him at every stage like any proud parent, recording his life from a helpless ball of fuzz to a playful, clumsy adolescent to a gorgeous, gold-and-white, macho adult owl with a heart-shaped face and an outsize personality that belied his 18-inch stature. Stacey and Wesley's bond deepened as she discovered Wesley's individual personality, subtle emotions, and playful nature that could also turn fiercely loyal and protective -- though she could have done without Wesley's driving away her would-be human suitors!

O'Brien also brings us inside the prestigious research community, a kind of scientific Hogwarts where resident owls sometimes flew freely from office to office and eccentric, brilliant scientists were extraordinarily committed to studying and helping animals; all of them were changed by the animal they loved. As O'Brien gets close to Wesley, she makes important discoveries about owl behavior, intelligence, and communication, coining the term "The Way of the Owl" to describe his inclinations: he did not tolerate lies, held her to her promises, and provided unconditional love, though he was not beyond an occasional sulk. When O'Brien develops her own life-threatening illness, the biologist who saved the life of a helpless baby bird is herself rescued from death by the insistent love and courage of this wild animal.

Enhanced by wonderful photos, Wesley the Owl is a thoroughly engaging, heartwarming, often funny story of a complex, emotional, non-human being capable of reason, play, and, most important, love and loyalty. It is sure to be cherished by animal lovers everywhere.

Birdscapes: A Pop-Up Celebration of Bird Songs in Stereo Sound

Authors: Miyoko Chu, Cornell Lab of Ornithology
ASIN : 0811864286
Sales Rank : 1800
Studio : Chronicle Books
Binding : Hardcover
EAN : 9780811864282
ISBN : 0811864286
Number Of Pages : 18
Publication Date : December 20, 2008
Publisher : Chronicle Books
Manufacturer : Chronicle Books
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Chronicle Books

Amazon.com Review

Product Description
Get ready for the most groundbreaking entry to date in the bestselling Birdsongs series (more than 400,000 copies sold!). Birdscapes delivers an immersive birding experience never before seen--or heard--in any book. For the eyes: seven elaborately engineered full-color pop-ups portraying dozens of bird species in diverse North American habitats from the Alaskan Tundra to a Southeast swamp. For the ears: extended recordings of the birds' calls and songs in stereo from the collection of the world-renowned Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. For the serious birder: scientifically accurate illustrations of the birds and moving text about their fragile ecosystems. This beautifully crafted volume is a visual and audio delight!

"Pop-up books aren't just for kids anymore! This multimedia experience transports you to seven natural habitats in North America and immerses you in the birds and their songs. --Greg Butcher, director of bird conservation, National Audubon Society

"Birdscapes is a delight for the eyes and the ears--a tour of North America's bird-rich ecosystems, rendered as seven lavishly detailed, three-dimensional landscapes, and brimming with choruses of authentic bird songs and calls." --Scott Weidensaul, author of Living on the Wind and Of a Feather

---

An Interview with Miyoko Chu, Director of Communications at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Q: When did you first become interested in birds?

A: When I was 11, my father and I rescued some pigeons from a poultry truck in San Francisco's Chinatown. I spent a lot of time in the backyard coop, watching the pigeons as they courted and raised their young. It was amazing to realize all this drama was playing out with wild birds everywhere, too, and to have the opportunity to study it.

Q: What's your favorite bird song and why?

A: My favorite song is that of the Scott’s Oriole, featured in the desert scene of Birdscapes. Hearing that clear, bubbling melody in the desert is an unforgettable experience.

Q: What was the best thing about working on Birdscapes?

A: It was exciting to go from the ideas and bird lists for each soundscape to seeing and hearing this three-dimensional product as it emerged from the minds of the artists, editors, and sound engineers. It was incredible to see the artists' sketches transform into complex and ingenious pop-up scenes, and to experience how precise recordings for each bird were blended to evoke the soundscape.

Q: Have you visited all of the seven different bird habitats featured in Birdscapes?

A: Of the seven habitats, I'm most familiar with the desert, where I studied birds during 1995-2000, and the eastern deciduous forest, which is right outside my office window. I have visited the Great Plains and Pacific evergreen forests. I have not been to the Arctic, a southern swamp, or a seabird colony. In writing those scenes, I benefited from the insights of my colleague Gerrit Vyn, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s audio production engineer, who selected the recordings, including some that he had recorded on recent expeditions to these habitats.

Q: Which habitat in Birdscapes did you enjoy writing about the most and why?

A: Actually, there were two that I enjoyed the most--for completely opposite reasons! I loved writing about the desert because I had spent so much time there, and remembered the sights and sounds so vividly. And it was great fun to write about the seabird colony because that was something I had never experienced before—and I was completely surprised by what I learned. Whether an individual seabird's voice or thousands, the sounds are awe-inspiring, and the birds have such an interesting lifestyle as they all cram on to a bit of rock for the breeding season.

Q: Are you a daily birder or a weekend birder?

A: I'm an opportunistic birder! I'm always watching and listening for birds around my house and neighborhood. But in between work and spending time with my family, my focused birding these days happens irregularly, on the spur of the moment. My office at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology overlooks Sapsucker Woods, so I sometimes slip outside to look for birds after getting an email alert about a good migration day, or when I notice people outside my window pointing up at the trees.

Q: Do you have any suggestions for beginning birders?

A: Invest in a pair of binoculars and practice becoming comfortable with them. It will open up a whole new world, enabling you to see many more birds than you may have even realized were around you before. Spend time getting to know the different kinds of birds you see, the reasons for their behaviors, and the many kinds of sounds they use throughout the year.

---

Excerpts from Birdscapes

Click on each image below to see a larger view of the page.

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More to Explore

Bird Songs: 250 North American Birds in Song

Bird Songs From Around the World

The Backyard Birdsong Guide: Eastern and Central North America

The Backyard Birdsong Guide: Western North America

The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies

Authors: Bert Hölldobler, Edward O. Wilson
ASIN : 0393067041
Sales Rank : 2360
Studio : W.W. Norton & Co.
Binding : Hardcover
EAN : 9780393067040
ISBN : 0393067041
Number Of Pages : 576
Publication Date : December 17, 2008
Publisher : W.W. Norton & Co.
Manufacturer : W.W. Norton & Co.
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : W.W. Norton & Co.

Product Description

The Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of The Ants render the extraordinary lives of the social insects in this visually spectacular volume. The Superorganism promises to be one of the most important scientific works published in this decade. Coming eighteen years after the publication of The Ants, this new volume expands our knowledge of the social insects (among them, ants, bees, wasps, and termites) and is based on remarkable research conducted mostly within the last two decades. These superorganisms—a tightly knit colony of individuals, formed by altruistic cooperation, complex communication, and division of labor—represent one of the basic stages of biological organization, midway between the organism and the entire species. The study of the superorganism, as the authors demonstrate, has led to important advances in our understanding of how the transitions between such levels have occurred in evolution and how life as a whole has progressed from simple to complex forms. Ultimately, this book provides a deep look into a part of the living world hitherto glimpsed by only a very few.

Audubon Nature Calendar 2009 (Wall Calendars)

Author: National Audubon Society
ASIN : 157965360X
Sales Rank : 1016
Studio : Artisan
Binding : Calendar
EAN : 9781579653606
ISBN : 157965360X
Number Of Pages : 28
Publication Date : December 01, 2008
Publisher : Artisan
Manufacturer : Artisan
Availability : In stock soon. Order now to get in line. First come, first served.
Label : Artisan

Product Description

Deep in the Grand Canyon, a misty waterfall splashes into an aquamarine pool. An orange and red sunset glows against the rippled dunes of White Sands National Monument. Wispy clouds cloak Washington's rugged, snow-dusted Mount Shuksan. Dramatic, pristine, and grand in scale, each of these full-color images is an impressive tribute to the power of North America's wilderness.

Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times (Mother Earth News Wiser Living Series)

Author: Steve Solomon
ASIN : 086571553X
Sales Rank : 941
Studio : New Society Publishers
Binding : Paperback
EAN : 9780865715530
ISBN : 086571553X
Number Of Pages : 360
Publication Date : December 01, 2006
Publisher : New Society Publishers
Manufacturer : New Society Publishers
Availability : Usually ships in 6 to 10 days
Label : New Society Publishers

Product Description

The decline of cheap oil is inspiring increasing numbers of North Americans to achieve some measure of backyard food self-sufficiency. In hard times, the family can be greatly helped by growing a highly productive food garden, requiring little cash outlay or watering.

Currently popular intensive vegetable gardening methods are largely inappropriate to this new circumstance. Crowded raised beds require high inputs of water, fertility and organic matter, and demand large amounts of human time and effort. But, except for labor, these inputs depend on the price of oil. Prior to the 1970s, North American home food growing used more land with less labor, with wider plant spacing, with less or no irrigation, and all done with sharp hand tools. But these sustainable systems have been largely forgotten. Gardening When It Counts helps readers rediscover traditional low-input gardening methods to produce healthy food.

Designed for readers with no experience and applicable to most areas in the English-speaking world except the tropics and hot deserts, this book shows that any family with access to 3-5,000 sq. ft. of garden land can halve their food costs using a growing system requiring just the odd bucketful of household waste water, perhaps two hundred dollars worth of hand tools, and about the same amount spent on supplies - working an average of two hours a day during the growing season.

Steve Solomon is a well-known west coast gardener and author of five previous books, including Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades which has appeared in five editions.

American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon

Author: Steven Rinella
ASIN : 0385521685
Sales Rank : 1823
Studio : Spiegel & Grau
Binding : Hardcover
EAN : 9780385521680
ISBN : 0385521685
Number Of Pages : 288
Publication Date : December 02, 2008
Release Date : December 02, 2008
Publisher : Spiegel & Grau
Manufacturer : Spiegel & Grau
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Spiegel & Grau

Product Description

A hunt for the American buffalo—an adventurous, fascinating examination of an animal that has haunted the American imagination.
 
In 2005, Steven Rinella won a lottery permit to hunt for a wild buffalo, or American bison, in the Alaskan wilderness. Despite the odds—there’s only a 2 percent chance of drawing the permit, and fewer than 20 percent of those hunters are successful—Rinella managed to kill a buffalo on a snow-covered mountainside and then raft the meat back to civilization while being trailed by grizzly bears and suffering from hypothermia. Throughout these adventures, Rinella found himself contemplating his own place among the 14,000 years’ worth of buffalo hunters in North America, as well as the buffalo’s place in the American experience. At the time of the Revolutionary War, North America was home to approximately 40 million buffalo, the largest herd of big mammals on the planet, but by the mid-1890s only a few hundred remained. Now that the buffalo is on the verge of a dramatic ecological recovery across the West, Americans are faced with the challenge of how, and if, we can dare to share our land with a beast that is the embodiment of the American wilderness.

American Buffalo is a narrative tale of Rinella’s hunt. But beyond that, it is the story of the many ways in which the buffalo has shaped our national identity. Rinella takes us across the continent in search of the buffalo’s past, present, and future: to the Bering Land Bridge, where scientists search for buffalo bones amid artifacts of the New World’s earliest human inhabitants; to buffalo jumps where Native Americans once ran buffalo over cliffs by the thousands; to the Detroit Carbon works, a “bone charcoal” plant that made fortunes in the late 1800s by turning millions of tons of buffalo bones into bone meal, black dye, and fine china; and even to an abattoir turned fashion mecca in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, where a depressed buffalo named Black Diamond met his fate after serving as the model for the American nickel.

 Rinella’s erudition and exuberance, combined with his gift for storytelling, make him the perfect guide for a book that combines outdoor adventure with a quirky blend of facts and observations about history, biology, and the natural world. Both a captivating narrative and a book of environmental and historical significance, American Buffalo tells us as much about ourselves as Americans as it does about the creature who perhaps best of all embodies the American ethos.

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best of the Month, December 2008: Before the 18th century, the American buffalo was the largest land mammal in North America, largely predator-free and roaming the continent in numbers estimated in excess of 40 million. In just over a century, widespread slaughter reduced the population to a few hundred head, and the American West lay beneath a till of bleached bones. When Steven Rinella stumbled over a buffalo skull in Yellowstone National Park, it sparked an obsessive search for the beast's past, from its migration across the Bering land bridge to its near extinction at the hands of western settlers. American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon is his fascinating chronicle, beginning with a search for Black Diamond (the doomed model for the Buffalo Nickel) and including an exploration of "buffalo jumps" (where thousands were run over cliffs by Native American hunters), and tales of bone piles--harvested from the plains for a thriving fertilizer industry--stacked 10 feet high, 20 feet wide, and a half-mile long. Rinella's history is deftly interwoven with his own literal buffalo hunt in Alaska's Wrangell mountains, complete with grizzly bears, raging, ice-rimmed rivers, and bouts of hypothermia and frostbite. Written in a spare style appropriate to the rigors of the frozen wilderness, American Buffalo is engrossing, informative, funny, and a welcome achievement of both natural history and outdoor adventure. --Jon Foro

The Daily Coyote: A Story of Love, Survival, and Trust in the Wilds of Wyoming

Author: Shreve Stockton
ASIN : 1416592180
Sales Rank : 2393
Studio : Simon & Schuster
Binding : Hardcover
EAN : 9781416592181
ISBN : 1416592180
Number Of Pages : 304
Publication Date : December 02, 2008
Publisher : Simon & Schuster
Manufacturer : Simon & Schuster
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Simon & Schuster

Product Description

When photographer and writer Shreve Stockton decided to move back to her beloved New York from San Francisco, she decided to take her time and make the trip on her Vespa. When she reached Wyoming, Shreve was captivated by the red dirt, the Bighorn Mountains, and the wide-open spaces. Unable to shake the spell of the "cowboy state," she soon found herself trading her New York City apartment for a house in Ten Sleep, Wyoming -- population 300.

Shreve threw away her cell phone and took to the rules of the land, adjusting to a lifestyle that was a near antithesis to that of the urban jungle. Time is of a different essence, nature is both livelihood and enemy, deer and coyote mark the dawn and dusk. After she met a local cowboy by chance on the side of the road, first a friendship and then a romance blossomed between them.

When Shreve was unexpectedly presented with a ten-day-old coyote pup whose parents had been shot for killing sheep, she had a choice to make. Despite her reservations and the terror of her tomcat Eli, Shreve decided to do the unthinkable -- to raise the coyote pup she came to call Charlie in her 12 12-foot log cabin.

In arresting prose and illuminated with Shreve's breathtaking photography, The Daily Coyote is at once Shreve's month-by-month exploration of Charlie's first year and a meditation on the nature of wildness versus domestication, of nature versus nurture, and of forgiveness, loyalty, and love in all its forms.

Bird Songs: 250 North American Birds in Song

Author: Les Beletsky
ASIN : 1932855416
Sales Rank : 4965
Studio : Chronicle Books
Binding : Hardcover
EAN : 9781932855418
ISBN : 1932855416
Number Of Pages : 368
Publication Date : December 21, 2006
Publisher : Chronicle Books
Manufacturer : Chronicle Books
Availability : Usually ships in 1 to 3 weeks
Label : Chronicle Books

Product Description

Drawing from the collection of the world-renowned Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Bird Songs presents the most notable North American birds—including the rediscovered Ivory-billed Woodpecker—in a stunning new format. Renowned bird biologist Les Beletsky provides a succinct description of each of the 250 birds profiled, with an emphasis on their distinctive songs. Lavish full-color illustrations accompany each account, while a sleek, built-in digital audio player holds 250 corresponding songs and calls. In his foreword, North American bird expert and distinguished natural historian Jon L. Dunn shares insights gained from a lifetime of passionate study. Complete with the most up-to-date and scientifically accurate information, Bird Songs is the first book to capture the enchantment of these beautiful birds in words, pictures, and song. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, located in Ithaca, New York, is a nonprofit institution focused on birds and whose mission is to interpret and conserve the earth's biological diversity through research. The Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab is the major source of sound recordings of birds for research, education, conservation, the media, and commercial products.

Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed

Author: Christopher C. Horner
ASIN : 1596985380
Sales Rank : 4698
Studio : Regnery Publishing
Binding : Hardcover
EAN : 9781596985384
ISBN : 1596985380
Number Of Pages : 407
Publication Date : December 11, 2008
Publisher : Regnery Publishing
Manufacturer : Regnery Publishing
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Regnery Publishing

Product Description

From the author of the New York Times bestselling Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to Global Warming (and Environmentalism) comes Red Hot Lies, an exposé of the hypocrisy, deceit, and outright lies of the global warming alarmists and the compliant media that support them. Did you know that most scientists are global warming skeptics? Or that environmental alarmists have knowingly promoted false and exaggerated data on global warming? Or that in the Left's efforts to suppress free speech (and scientific research), they have compared global warming dissent with "treason"?

Shocking, frank, and illuminating, Chris Horner's Red Hot Lies explodes as many myths as Al Gore promotes.