Eagle on Ice


Book Description

A remarkable story that focuses on the 1928-1930 adventures of nineteen-year-old Paul Siple, the Eagle Scout selected to go on Commander Richard E. Byrd's first expedition to Antarctica.




Gifts of an Eagle


Book Description

New York Times Bestseller: The “extraordinary” true story of a golden eagle adopted by a California ranching family, and how she changed their lives (Delia Ephron). In 1955, Ed Durden brought a baby golden eagle home to his ranch in California, where she would stay for the next sixteen years. As her bond with Ed and the Durden family grew, the eagle, named Lady, displayed a fierce intelligence and strong personality. She learned quickly, had a strong mothering instinct (even for other species), and never stopped surprising those who cared for her. An eight-week New York Times bestseller, Gifts of an Eagle is a fascinating up-close look at one of the most majestic creatures in nature, as well as a heartwarming family story and “an affectionate, unsentimental tribute” (Kirkus Reviews).




Animal Speak


Book Description

Open your heart and mind to the wisdom of the animal world. Animal Speak provides techniques for recognizing and interpreting the signs and omens of nature. Meet and work with animals as totems and spirit guides by learning the language of their behaviors within the physical world. Animal Speak shows you how to: Identify, meet, and attune to your spirit animals Discover the power and spiritual significance of more than 100 different animals, birds, insects, and reptiles Call upon the protective powers of your animal totem Create and use five magical animal rites, including shapeshifting and sacred dance This beloved, bestselling guide has become a classic reference for anyone wishing to forge a spiritual connection with the majesty and mystery of the animal world.




Owls of the Eastern Ice


Book Description

A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 Longlisted for the National Book Award Winner of the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award and the Minnesota Book Award for General Nonfiction A Finalist for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year Award Winner of the Peace Corps Worldwide Special Book Award A Best Book of the Year: NPR, The Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, The Globe and Mail, The BirdBooker Report, Geographical, Open Letter Review Best Nature Book of the Year: The Times (London) "A terrifically exciting account of [Slaght's] time in the Russian Far East studying Blakiston’s fish owls, huge, shaggy-feathered, yellow-eyed, and elusive birds that hunt fish by wading in icy water . . . Even on the hottest summer days this book will transport you.” —Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk, in Kirkus I saw my first Blakiston’s fish owl in the Russian province of Primorye, a coastal talon of land hooking south into the belly of Northeast Asia . . . No scientist had seen a Blakiston’s fish owl so far south in a hundred years . . . When he was just a fledgling birdwatcher, Jonathan C. Slaght had a chance encounter with one of the most mysterious birds on Earth. Bigger than any owl he knew, it looked like a small bear with decorative feathers. He snapped a quick photo and shared it with experts. Soon he was on a five-year journey, searching for this enormous, enigmatic creature in the lush, remote forests of eastern Russia. That first sighting set his calling as a scientist. Despite a wingspan of six feet and a height of over two feet, the Blakiston’s fish owl is highly elusive. They are easiest to find in winter, when their tracks mark the snowy banks of the rivers where they feed. They are also endangered. And so, as Slaght and his devoted team set out to locate the owls, they aim to craft a conservation plan that helps ensure the species’ survival. This quest sends them on all-night monitoring missions in freezing tents, mad dashes across thawing rivers, and free-climbs up rotting trees to check nests for precious eggs. They use cutting-edge tracking technology and improvise ingenious traps. And all along, they must keep watch against a run-in with a bear or an Amur tiger. At the heart of Slaght’s story are the fish owls themselves: cunning hunters, devoted parents, singers of eerie duets, and survivors in a harsh and shrinking habitat. Through this rare glimpse into the everyday life of a field scientist and conservationist, Owls of the Eastern Ice testifies to the determination and creativity essential to scientific advancement and serves as a powerful reminder of the beauty, strength, and vulnerability of the natural world.




An Eternity of Eagles


Book Description

An Eternity of Eagles The Human History of the Most Fascinating Bird in the World A compulsively readable natural and social history, An Eternity of Eagles is a profusely illustrated celebration of all things eagle, by a naturalist who has kept eagles himself and ridden with the eagle tribes of Central Asia. "His vivid description of an eagle, if it could imagine itself, is of a 'carnivorous Buddhist.' Through Bodio’s insights we get a strange glimpse of these other minds that share the earth with us." --Annie Proulx, author of The Shipping News and Brokeback Mountain From one of the foremost author/naturalists in the country, Stephen J. Bodio, comes a compulsively readable natural and social history of the most beautiful bird in the world -- the eagle, with a lengthy and admiring introduction by Annie Proulx. The Eagle’s Shadow traces our love-hate relationship to these “living dinosaurs,” from Neolithic rock art and Native American religion through the practices of Kazakh falconers who use them to hunt wolves, and to contemporary art and popular culture. Proulx sums up best the heart of this book: “Those of us who are interested in bird behavior beyond the feeder or the identification guide book find meager pickings when it comes to information. I am fortunate that my house faces a cliff with a river at the base where I can watch raptors, water fowl, and a hundred other species. The nests of a pair of bald eagles and another upriver inhabited by golden eagles are in sight from the breakfast table. I have plenty of books on birds, but the information on why the big eagles do what they do is hard to dig out. Eagle behavior is usually lumped together with the general behavior of the Accipitrids, but a single book focused on the rich lore and sweep of eagledom did not seem to exist… . Bodio’s beautifully written and authoritative book, Eagles, is a primary source of information as well as an omnium gatherum from literature, film and mythology concerning these large, striking birds.” Stephen Bodio was born and educated in Boston and has lived in a rural New Mexico village for over thirty years. He has traveled extensively in Europe, Africa, and Asia and has written five books.




Surfacing


Book Description

Collective Winner of the 2019 Highland Book Prize Under the ravishing light of an Alaskan sky, objects are spilling from the thawing tundra linking a Yup'ik village to its hunter-gatherer past. In the shifting sand dunes of a Scottish shoreline, impressively preserved hearths and homes of Neolithic farmers are uncovered. In a grandmother's disordered mind, memories surface of a long-ago mining accident and a 'mither who was kind'. For this luminous new essay collection, acclaimed author Kathleen Jamie visits archaeological sites and mines her own memories - of her grandparents, of youthful travels - to explore what surfaces and what reconnects us to our past. As always she looks to the natural world for her markers and guides. Most movingly, she considers, as her father dies, and her children leave home, the surfacing of an older, less tethered sense of herself. Surfacing offers a profound sense of time passing and an antidote to all that is instant, ephemeral, unrooted.




The Way of the Eagle


Book Description




The Empire of the Eagle


Book Description

Encompasses each of the world's currently recognized eagle species, from the huge Steller's Sea Eagle that soars above Japan's winter ice floes to the diminutive Little Eagle that hunts over the Australian outback




In Ice and Blood


Book Description

Aquila's life belongs to her King. As his assassin she does her duty without question. When a threat to King Myles rises, she's sent out to quench it. As efficiently and ruthlessly as always. Betrayed, Aquila is left to suffer under a cruel curse. One that steals everything from her, leaving only agonizing guilt. Her failure to kill severed the world. Determined to set things right, Aquila sets off on a journey through a tangle of missing memories and a world that no longer works as she remembers. At least she's not alone, her savior stays by her side.




Ice


Book Description

Like the adventurer who circled an iceberg to see it on all sides, Mariana Gosnell, former Newsweek reporter and author of Zero Three Bravo, a book about flying a small plane around the United States, explores ice in all its complexity, grandeur, and significance.More brittle than glass, at times stronger than steel, at other times flowing like molasses, ice covers 10 percent of the earth’s land and 7 percent of its oceans. In nature it is found in myriad forms, from the delicate needle ice that crunches underfoot in a winter meadow to the massive, centuries-old ice that forms the world’s glaciers. Scientists theorize that icy comets delivered to Earth the molecules needed to get life started, and ice ages have shaped much of the land as we know it.Here is the whole world of ice, from the freezing of Pleasant Lake in New Hampshire to the breakup of a Vermont river at the onset of spring, from the frozen Antarctic landscape that emperor penguins inhabit to the cold, watery route bowhead whales take between Arctic ice floes. Mariana Gosnell writes about frostbite and about the recently discovered 5,000-year-old body of a man preserved in an Alpine glacier. She discusses the work of scientists who extract cylinders of Greenland ice to study the history of the earth’s climate and try to predict its future. She examines ice in plants, icebergs, icicles, and hail; sea ice and permafrost; ice on Mars and in the rings of Saturn; and several new forms of ice developed in labs. She writes of the many uses humans make of ice, including ice-skating, ice fishing, iceboating, and ice climbing; building ice roads and seeding clouds; making ice castles, ice cubes, and iced desserts. Ice is a sparkling illumination of the natural phenomenon whose ebbs and flows over time have helped form the world we live in. It is a pleasure to read, and important to read—for its natural science and revelations about ice’s influence on our everyday lives, and for what it has to tell us about our environment today and in the future.