Download or read book Drawn From Paradise The Discovery Art and Natural History of the Birds of Paradise written by Sir David Attenborough and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2012-08-30 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawn from Paradise is David Attenborough’s journey through the cultural history of the birds of paradise, one of the most exquisite and extravagant, colourful and intriguing families of birds.
Download or read book Drawn from Paradise written by David Attenborough and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-04-16 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the moment Europeans were introduced to the birds of paradise in the early sixteenth century, their unique beauty was recognized and commemorated in the first name that they were given - birds so beautiful they must be from paradise. Originally they were thought not to have legs and therefore never to land. Still very rarely encountered, even in their natural habitat of New Guinea, they are still birds that elicit sheer awe in those who are lucky enough to see them. Drawn From Paradise will showcase the magnificence and beauty of the birds of paradise as they have never before been seen, with more than two-hundred hand-painted images and sketches by the men who originally studied them and luminary artists such as Jacques Barraband, William Hart, John Gould, Rubens and Breughel, to name a few. The art comes from the private collections of the two authors and has been rarely if ever published. Not only will the book feature the beautiful Greater Bird of Paradise-a bird that was originally believed to have been sent from Paradise, and was thought to never touch the earth-but it will also present more than forty other distinct species currently recognized-each representing amazing differences in size, shape, and color patterning. The introduction provides a brief history into the discovery of these illustrious birds, from how they were originally perceived and idolized by the natives of New Guinea, to the arrival of Europeans, who were immediately captivated by their bright, vibrant colors. The chapters are ordered according to the sequence in which the birds representing the various genera made their appearance in Europe (thereby highlighting the books educational aspect). Within its pages, readers will catch a glimpse of these birds through vivid, highly-detailed painting, as well as learn more about each individual bird and genus-comparisons and contrasts between the males and females, as well as between the different genus's. A tour through art and history, with a good deal of ornithology thrown in, Drawn From Paradise is not only a must-have for ornithologists and bird-watchers, but also a beautiful collectible for students, artists, and aesthetes. Its central idea is to showcase the breathtaking beauty of these birds and the enormous interest that still surrounds them even today.
Download or read book The Feather Thief written by Kirk Wallace Johnson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-04-24 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As heard on NPR's This American Life “Absorbing . . . Though it's non-fiction, The Feather Thief contains many of the elements of a classic thriller.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air “One of the most peculiar and memorable true-crime books ever.” —Christian Science Monitor A rollicking true-crime adventure and a captivating journey into an underground world of fanatical fly-tiers and plume peddlers, for readers of The Stranger in the Woods, The Lost City of Z, and The Orchid Thief. On a cool June evening in 2009, after performing a concert at London's Royal Academy of Music, twenty-year-old American flautist Edwin Rist boarded a train for a suburban outpost of the British Museum of Natural History. Home to one of the largest ornithological collections in the world, the Tring museum was full of rare bird specimens whose gorgeous feathers were worth staggering amounts of money to the men who shared Edwin's obsession: the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying. Once inside the museum, the champion fly-tier grabbed hundreds of bird skins—some collected 150 years earlier by a contemporary of Darwin's, Alfred Russel Wallace, who'd risked everything to gather them—and escaped into the darkness. Two years later, Kirk Wallace Johnson was waist high in a river in northern New Mexico when his fly-fishing guide told him about the heist. He was soon consumed by the strange case of the feather thief. What would possess a person to steal dead birds? Had Edwin paid the price for his crime? What became of the missing skins? In his search for answers, Johnson was catapulted into a years-long, worldwide investigation. The gripping story of a bizarre and shocking crime, and one man's relentless pursuit of justice, The Feather Thief is also a fascinating exploration of obsession, and man's destructive instinct to harvest the beauty of nature.
Download or read book Plumes from Paradise written by Pamela Swadling and published by Sydney University Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The natural resources of New Guinea and nearby islands have attracted outsiders for at least 5000 years: spices, aromatic woods and barks, resins, plumes, sea slugs, shells and pearls all brought traders from distant markets. Among the most sought-after was the bird of paradise. Their magnificent plumes bedecked the hats of fashion-conscious women in Europe and America, provided regalia for the Kings of Nepal, and decorated the headdresses of Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire. Plumes from Paradise tells the story of this interaction, and of the economic, political, social and cultural consequence for the island's inhabitants. It traces 400 years of economic and political history, culminating in the 'plume boom' of the early part of the 20th century, when an unprecedented number of outsiders flocked to the island's coasts and hinterlands. The story teems with the variety of people involved: New Guineans, Indonesians, Chinese, Europeans, hunters, traders, natural historians and their collectors, officials, missionaries, planters, miners, adventurers of every kind. In the wings were the conservationists, whose efforts brought the slaughter of the plume boom to an end and ushered in an era of comparative isolation for the island that lasted until World War II.
Download or read book The Hypothetical Species written by Michael Charles Tobias and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-03-28 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a provocative and invigorating real-time exploration of the future of human evolution by two of the world’s leading interdisciplinary ecologists – Michael Charles Tobias and Jane Gray Morrison. Steeped in a rich multitude of the sciences and humanities, the book enshrines an elegant narrative that is highly empathetic, personal, scientifically wide-ranging and original. It focuses on the geo-positioning of the human Self and its corresponding species. The book's overarching viewpoints and poignant through-story examine and powerfully challenge concepts associated historically with assertions of human superiority over all other life forms. Ultimately, The Hypothetical Species: Variables of Human Evolution is a deeply considered treatise on the ecological and psychological state of humanity and her options – both within, and outside the rubrics of evolutionary research – for survival. This important work is beautifully presented with nearly 200 diverse illustrations, and is introduced with a foreword by famed paleobiologist, Dr. Melanie DeVore.
Download or read book Gulls of Europe North Africa and the Middle East written by Peter Adriaens and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-04-05 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "There is no summary for this book at this time"--
Download or read book The Ascent of Birds written by John Reilly and published by Pelagic Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2018-04-16 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When and where did the ancestors of modern birds evolve? What enabled them to survive the meteoric impact that wiped out the dinosaurs? How did these early birds spread across the globe and give rise to the 10,600-plus species we recognise today ― from the largest ratites to the smallest hummingbirds? Based on the latest scientific discoveries and enriched by personal observations, The Ascent of Birds sets out to answer these fundamental questions. The Ascent of Birds is divided into self-contained chapters, or stories, that collectively encompass the evolution of modern birds from their origins in Gondwana, over 100 million years ago, to the present day. The stories are arranged in chronological order, from tinamous to tanagers, and describe the many dispersal and speciation events that underpin the world's 10,600-plus species. Although each chapter is spearheaded by a named bird and focuses on a specific evolutionary mechanism, the narrative will often explore the relevance of such events and processes to evolution in general. The book starts with The Tinamou’s Story, which explains the presence of flightless birds in South America, Africa, and Australasia, and dispels the cherished role of continental drift as an explanation for their biogeography. It also introduces the concept of neoteny, an evolutionary trick that enabled dinosaurs to become birds and humans to conquer the planet. The Vegavis's Story explores the evidence for a Cretaceous origin of modern birds and why they were able to survive the asteroid collision that saw the demise not only of dinosaurs but of up to three-quarters of all species. The Duck's Story switches to sex: why have so few species retained the ancestral copulatory organ? Or, put another way, why do most birds exhibit the paradoxical phenomenon of penis loss, despite all species requiring internal fertilisation? The Hoatzin's Story reveals unexpected oceanic rafting from Africa to South America: a stranger-than-fiction means of dispersal that is now thought to account for the presence of other South American vertebrates, including geckos and monkeys. The latest theories underpinning speciation are also explored. The Manakin’s Story, for example, reveals how South America’s extraordinarily rich avifauna has been shaped by past geological, oceanographic and climatic changes, while The Storm-Petrel’s Story examines how species can evolve from an ancestral population despite inhabiting the same geographical area. The thorny issue of what constitutes a species is discussed in The Albatross's Story, while The Penguin’s Story explores the effects of environment on phenotype ― in the case of the Emperor penguin, the harshest on the planet. Recent genomic advances have given scientists novel approaches to explore the distant past and have revealed many unexpected journeys, including the unique overland dispersal of an early suboscine from Asia to South America (The Sapayoa’s Story) and the blackbird's ancestral sweepstake dispersals across the Atlantic (The Thrush’s Story). Additional vignettes update more familiar concepts that encourage speciation: sexual selection (The Bird-of-Paradise's Story); extended phenotypes (The Bowerbird's Story); hybridisation (The Sparrow's Story); and 'great speciators' (The White-eye's Story). Finally, the book explores the raft of recent publications that help explain the evolution of cognitive skills (The Crow's Story); plumage colouration (The Starling's Story); and birdsong (The Finch's Story)
Download or read book The Last of Its Kind written by Gísli Pálsson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2024-02-06 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How an iconic bird’s final days exposed the reality of human-caused extinction The great auk is one of the most tragic and documented examples of extinction. A flightless bird that bred primarily on the remote islands of the North Atlantic, the last of its kind were killed in Iceland in 1844. Gísli Pálsson draws on firsthand accounts from the Icelanders who hunted the last great auks to bring to life a bygone age of Victorian scientific exploration while offering vital insights into the extinction of species. Pálsson vividly recounts how British ornithologists John Wolley and Alfred Newton set out for Iceland to collect specimens only to discover that the great auks were already gone. At the time, the Victorian world viewed extinction as an impossibility or trivialized it as a natural phenomenon. Pálsson chronicles how Wolley and Newton documented the fate of the last birds through interviews with the men who killed them, and how the naturalists’ Icelandic journey opened their eyes to the disappearance of species as a subject of scientific concern—and as something that could be caused by humans. Blending a richly evocative narrative with rare, unpublished material as well as insights from ornithology, anthropology, and Pálsson’s own North Atlantic travels, The Last of Its Kind reveals how the saga of the great auk opens a window onto the human causes of mass extinction.
Download or read book The Feather Thief written by Kirk Wallace Johnson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-04-23 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As heard on NPR's This American Life “Absorbing . . . Though it's non-fiction, The Feather Thief contains many of the elements of a classic thriller.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air “One of the most peculiar and memorable true-crime books ever.” —Christian Science Monitor From the author of The Fishermen and the Dragon, a rollicking true-crime adventure and a captivating journey into an underground world of fanatical fly-tiers and plume peddlers, for readers of The Stranger in the Woods, The Lost City of Z, and The Orchid Thief. On a cool June evening in 2009, after performing a concert at London's Royal Academy of Music, twenty-year-old American flautist Edwin Rist boarded a train for a suburban outpost of the British Museum of Natural History. Home to one of the largest ornithological collections in the world, the Tring museum was full of rare bird specimens whose gorgeous feathers were worth staggering amounts of money to the men who shared Edwin's obsession: the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying. Once inside the museum, the champion fly-tier grabbed hundreds of bird skins—some collected 150 years earlier by a contemporary of Darwin's, Alfred Russel Wallace, who'd risked everything to gather them—and escaped into the darkness. Two years later, Kirk Wallace Johnson was waist high in a river in northern New Mexico when his fly-fishing guide told him about the heist. He was soon consumed by the strange case of the feather thief. What would possess a person to steal dead birds? Had Edwin paid the price for his crime? What became of the missing skins? In his search for answers, Johnson was catapulted into a years-long, worldwide investigation. The gripping story of a bizarre and shocking crime, and one man's relentless pursuit of justice, The Feather Thief is also a fascinating exploration of obsession, and man's destructive instinct to harvest the beauty of nature.
Download or read book Searching for Paradise written by Charles Nombo Lapa and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2024-02-15 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A warrior chief waited on a sacred mountain in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, seeking dreams and revelations from the spirit world. In the night he heard a voice, unlike any voice he had heard before. The voice called just one word, “Tiki!” It was the name of the chief’s young son. Three times the call came, then there was silence. This book is the true story of Tiki. It is a story of chiefs, of gangs, of colonization, and of politics. It is also a story of how faith can shape the lives of individuals, communities, and nations.
Download or read book Jan Brueghel the Elder written by Arianne Faber Kolb and published by Getty Publications. This book was released on 2005 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kolb has produced a thoroughly researched essay on this painting, which is in the Getty Museum. The study focuses on Brueghel's depiction of nature, especially his exacting representation of identifiable species of animals and birds, the names of which are listed. Brueghel's collaboration with other painters, his and other painters' re-use of the same theme and composition, and the history and practice of natural history collection and representation are central themes. The volume, which is printed in a horizontal format (it's 11x8") and heavily illustrated, is written for a general audience, though art historians will also find much of interest.
Download or read book Birds of Paradise and Bowerbirds written by Phil Gregory and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in the United Kingdom by Helm/Bloomsbury in 2019.
Download or read book Feathers written by Cloé Fraigneau and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-11-25 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This guide to the feathers of Europe's birds covers more than 400 species, with an innovative key allowing for exceptionally precise identification by colour as well feather structure and shape. Collection and conservation methods, locations of feathers on the bird, and identification and description of the feathers of species are clearly explained and richly illustrated. The large format of the book allows feathers to be shown in great detail. - The feathers of more than 400 European species are described, more than 300 are illustrated, and there is a total of 400 photographs. - A large format guide allows for efficient identification. - Presents a novel and innovative method to recognise the feathers of Europe's birds.
Download or read book Visions of Savage Paradise written by Rebecca Parker Brienen and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Visions of Savage Paradise is the first major book-length study of seventeenth-century Dutch artist Albert Eckhout to be published in nearly seventy years. Eckhout, who was court painter to the colonial governor of Dutch Brazil, created life-size paintings of Amerindians, Africans, and Brazilians of mixed race in support of the governor’s project to document the people and natural history of the colony. In this study, Rebecca Parker Brienen provides a detailed analysis of Eckhout’s works, framing them with discussions of both their colonial context and contemporary artistic practices in the Dutch republic.
Download or read book Extinction Studies written by Deborah Bird Rose and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Extinction Studies focuses on the entangled ecological and social dimensions of extinction, exploring the ways in which extinction catastrophically interrupts life-giving processes of time, death, and generations. The volume opens up important philosophical questions about our place in, and obligations to, a more-than-human world. Drawing on fieldwork, philosophy, literature, history, and a range of other perspectives, each of the chapters in this book tells a unique extinction story that explores what extinction is, what it means, why it matters—and to whom.
Download or read book Life on Air written by David Attenborough and published by Random House. This book was released on 2009 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sir David Attenborough is Britain's best-known natural history film-maker. His career as a naturalist and broadcaster has spanned nearly six decades, and in this volume of memoirs Sir David tells stories of the people and animals he has met and the places he has visited. His first job - after Cambridge University and two years in the Royal Navy - was at a London publishing house. Then in 1952 he joined the BBC as a trainee producer, and it was while working on the Zoo Quest series (1954-64) that he had his first opportunity to undertake expeditions to remote parts of the globe, to capture intimate footage of rare wildlife in its natural habitat. He was Controller of BBC2 (1965-68), during which time he introduced colour television to Britain, then Director of Programmes for the BBC (1969-1972). However, in 1973 he abandoned administration altogether to return to documentary-making and writing, and has established himself as the world's leading Natural History programme maker with several landmark BBC series, including Life on Earth (1979), The Living Planet (1984), The Trials of Life (1990), The Private Life of Plants (1995), Life of Birds (1998), The Blue Planet (2001), Life of Mammals (2002), Planet Earth (2006) and Life in Cold Blood (2008). Sir David is an Honorary Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, a Fellow of the Royal Society and was knighted in 1985. He is also Britain's most respected, trusted and lauded natural history broadcaster and writer, championing conservation and standing at the forefront of issues concerning the planet's declining species. A lot has changed since his first television documentary, and in this updated edition of Life on Air Sir David tells us of his experiences of filming in the 21st century.
Download or read book The Evolution of Beauty written by Richard O. Prum and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, SMITHSONIAN, AND WALL STREET JOURNAL A major reimagining of how evolutionary forces work, revealing how mating preferences—what Darwin termed "the taste for the beautiful"—create the extraordinary range of ornament in the animal world. In the great halls of science, dogma holds that Darwin's theory of natural selection explains every branch on the tree of life: which species thrive, which wither away to extinction, and what features each evolves. But can adaptation by natural selection really account for everything we see in nature? Yale University ornithologist Richard Prum—reviving Darwin's own views—thinks not. Deep in tropical jungles around the world are birds with a dizzying array of appearances and mating displays: Club-winged Manakins who sing with their wings, Great Argus Pheasants who dazzle prospective mates with a four-foot-wide cone of feathers covered in golden 3D spheres, Red-capped Manakins who moonwalk. In thirty years of fieldwork, Prum has seen numerous display traits that seem disconnected from, if not outright contrary to, selection for individual survival. To explain this, he dusts off Darwin's long-neglected theory of sexual selection in which the act of choosing a mate for purely aesthetic reasons—for the mere pleasure of it—is an independent engine of evolutionary change. Mate choice can drive ornamental traits from the constraints of adaptive evolution, allowing them to grow ever more elaborate. It also sets the stakes for sexual conflict, in which the sexual autonomy of the female evolves in response to male sexual control. Most crucially, this framework provides important insights into the evolution of human sexuality, particularly the ways in which female preferences have changed male bodies, and even maleness itself, through evolutionary time. The Evolution of Beauty presents a unique scientific vision for how nature's splendor contributes to a more complete understanding of evolution and of ourselves.
