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Summary: A Wonderful BookI
Review: If you enjoy nature reading you will love this book. I am not a birder, but nevertheless found this book to be an eloquent and fascinating read. Weidensaul introduces and explores a world that occurs around us every day but that few of us know anything about. He writes extremely well. Overall, a wonderful book.
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Summary: A Terrific Read!
Review: Living on the Wind is, simply put, the best non-fiction I've read in the past year. Yes, I'm a birder, but Weidensaul's vivid, bell-clear prose makes the world of migratory birds and those who care about them come alive for anyone who picks up the book. Comprehensive and detailed, the book leaves you changed in your understanding of the largely invisible nation of birds outside your door.
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Summary: a fascinating,readable book on migration
Review: not just another dry tome, but hard to stop reading for an almost eighty birder with sixty five years of pleasure in looking. and seeing, and marveling at the wonder of migration. Scott Wiedensaul has handed a genuine nugget to birders everywhere.
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Summary: Fabulous tales of a rarely covered subject - bird migrations
Review: Scott weaves details and anecdotes into what might otherwise be a fairly dry subject. A lengthy read because of its very comprehensive nature. My bet is that even Audubon Society bird lovers will see a broad range of ornithological information of which they were unaware. A skilled author presents in a way I will read chapter by chapter over time, rather than trying to complete in a weekend.
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Summary: Vivid and poetic language
Review: The information on bird migration is absolutely engrossing. However, the language Weidensaul uses is even more enjoyable. I kept the computer dictionary next to me while reading the book to check the beautiful language used to describe bird behavior and their habitats. This book is inspiring and thought provoking even for non-birders like me (I am likely classified as a computer geek).
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Summary: The Birding Year
Review: This is a book that will interest both people with only a passing interest in birds, and those with a very serious interest in bird ecology. It is an easy read, but still is cramed full of useful information about bird migration. Weidensaul follows many different species of birds as they move about during the migratory year. He clearly shows how all the places employed during migration, breeding and nonbreeding seasons are interrelated, and just how fragile the entire migratory system is for the birds. Living on the Wind is must read for any serious birder, and one well worth reading even if you are not!
Rating:
Summary: The Birding Year
Review: This is a book that will interest both people with only a passing interest in birds, and those with a very serious interest in bird ecology. It is an easy read, but still is cramed full of useful information about bird migration. Weidensaul follows many different species of birds as they move about during the migratory year. He clearly shows how all the places employed during migration, breeding and nonbreeding seasons are interrelated, and just how fragile the entire migratory system is for the birds. Living on the Wind is must read for any serious birder, and one well worth reading even if you are not!
Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful BookI
Review: This is absolutely one of the best non-fiction books I have ever read. Not only backyard birding enthusiasts, but anyone who has ever had even a passing interest in birds will love this book. Scott writes about birds in an understanding yet scientific manner that lends itself to wonderful readability while providing vast amounts of information. Beginning in Alaska, moving down the hemisphere to the pampas of Argentina, and back again, he takes the reader on a amazing journey that literally follows the paths taken by millions of birds each year. He combines personal field experiences with well assembled accounts of scientific research and ornithological history to paint a vivid picture of the swirling patterns of avian movement across the globe. If you have ever looked twice at a bird passing overhead, I highly reccomend picking up this valuable addition to any naturalist's library.
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Summary: Tales of migration that read like a Crichton novel...
Review: This is absolutely one of the best non-fiction books I have ever read. Not only backyard birding enthusiasts, but anyone who has ever had even a passing interest in birds will love this book. Scott writes about birds in an understanding yet scientific manner that lends itself to wonderful readability while providing vast amounts of information. Beginning in Alaska, moving down the hemisphere to the pampas of Argentina, and back again, he takes the reader on a amazing journey that literally follows the paths taken by millions of birds each year. He combines personal field experiences with well assembled accounts of scientific research and ornithological history to paint a vivid picture of the swirling patterns of avian movement across the globe. If you have ever looked twice at a bird passing overhead, I highly reccomend picking up this valuable addition to any naturalist's library.
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Summary: Moving, well-informed discussion of migration in the '90s.
Review: This review by Charlotte Seidenberg was published Sunday, May 9, 1999 in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune ''So tell me, what is a blackburnian warbler worth, orange and ebony like a jungle tiger?'' Scott Weidensaul asks in ''Living on the Wind: Across the Globe with Migratory Birds." "In the end such measures are pointless," he answers. "We should probably just stand aside and watch with quiet humility as another generation of travelers flies north, compelled by a priceless bravery buried deep in their genes." Though some gloomy scientists predict the end of migrations in our lifetime, Weidensaul says "there's no future in pessimism. Here, at the last possible moment, we have awakened to what we stand to lose -- poised on the brink, but still, perhaps, with time to draw away from the edge." This immensely readable exploration of bird migration by a prolific nature writer and licensed bird bander shows us just what we stand to lose. It's science that reads like adventure with well-drawn characters in vividly described settings. It's about birds and nature, but also about people and the ways they interact with the natural world. It's a cliffhanger with the ending as yet unwritten. The author traveled from one end of the Western Hemisphere to the other pursuing the mysteries of migration: from the western Alaskan breeding grounds of millions of shorebirds with names such as tattler and dunlin and godwit to the Argentine pampas, wintering grounds of the Swainson's hawk, "a bird made of light and shadow, at home in the pale blue bowl of the prairie sky." In Vera Cruz, Mexico, he watched thousands of migratory hawks, kites, and vultures "move across the landscape by sliding from thermal to thermal, forming enormous kettles that swirl and seethe with wheeling birds." He visited the Platte River in Nebraska, where half a million sandhill cranes with six-foot wingspans rest on their way to the tundra, and experienced an avian "fallout" on the Gulf Coast, where "small explosions of birds would materialize out of the sky, whirring from on high, beyond the limit of vision and into the trees like bolts, until the woods were stuffed to overflowing with them." People in pursuit Weidensaul's human subjects are equally vivid, ranging from passionate goose hunters to birders "with thousand dollar binoculars and field guides worn in holster-like pouches riding low on their hips." He introduces a backyard birder who fed a ton and a half of food to 150 grosbeaks in his yard one winter and "citizen scientists" who collaborate on research projects, doing field work in their backyards and reporting via the Internet. Elucidating the scientific process for the layman, he makes fieldwork seem like adventure, describing ornithologists who signed onto Norwegian freighters to prove trans-Gulf migration, who rigged hawks with radio transmitters to track them to their wintering grounds, who used radar to study migration and gathered the "first hard, quantifiable evidence that a decline had indeed taken place." Other scientists studied warblers wintering in Jamaica and the same species summering in New Hampshire, and "uncovered an army of dangers that we, in our heedless manipulation of the natural world, are making worse." Scientists now recognize a host of problems for migratory birds -- from habitat loss to predation by domestic cats -- and are searching for solutions. Will those solutions come too late? Before dawn in late spring, Weidensaul travels to an eastern forest, where male wood thrushes sing "their clear notes scrolling up and down like improvisations, looping back on themselves, then ringing out in lucent peals. When the thrush stops, it feels as though the forest is holding its breath." What if the thrush stopped forever? After reading "Living on the Wind," you'll likely agree the thought is unacceptable. Living on the Wind: Across the Globe With Migratory Birds Review: A beautifully written, well-informed and moving discussion of migratory birds and the problems affecting migration in the '90s. Especially entertaining are the author's portraits of people who are passionate about birds. © Copyright 1999 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
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