Rare Birds of North America


Book Description

The first comprehensive illustrated guide to North America's vagrant birds Rare Birds of North America is the first comprehensive illustrated guide to the vagrant birds that occur throughout the United States and Canada. Featuring 275 stunning color plates, this book covers 262 species originating from three very different regions—the Old World, the New World tropics, and the world's oceans. It explains the causes of avian vagrancy and breaks down patterns of occurrence by region and season, enabling readers to see where, when, and why each species occurs in North America. Detailed species accounts describe key identification features, taxonomy, age, sex, distribution, and status. Rare Birds of North America provides unparalleled insights into vagrancy and avian migration, and will enrich the birding experience of anyone interested in finding and observing rare birds. Covers 262 species of vagrant birds found in the United States and Canada Features 275 stunning color plates that depict every species Explains patterns of occurrence by region and season Provides an invaluable overview of vagrancy patterns and migration Includes detailed species accounts and cutting-edge identification tips




Tracing T. S. Eliot's Spirit


Book Description

T. S. Eliot's lifelong quest for a world of the spirit is the theme of this book by leading Eliot scholar A. David Moody. The first four essays in the collection map Eliot's spiritual geography: the American taproot of his poetry, his profound engagement with the philosophy and religion of India, his near and yet detached relations with England, and his problematic cultivation of a European mind. At the centre of the collection is a study of the Latin poem Pervigilium Veneris, a fragment of which figures enigmatically in the concluding lines of The Waste Land. The third part of the collection is a set of five investigations of Eliot's poems, dealing particularly with The Waste Land, Ash Wednesday and Four Quartets, and attending to how they express and shape what he called 'the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being'.




A View from the South


Book Description

A celebration of the prolific artist's heartfelt devotion to the people and places of the American South A View from the South: The Narrative Art of Boyd Saunders is the first comprehensive examination of the life and art of one of America's premier printmakers. In this celebration of an enduring and widely acclaimed career as an artist, Thomas Dewey II chronicles Saunders's work not only as a printmaker, but also as a painter, sculptor, illustrator, author, educator, amateur musician, and sometimes horseman. With great care Dewey exposes the common thread that runs through Saunders's visual expressions: his intriguing tales that reveal his heartfelt devotion to the people and places of the American South. Dewey has captured Saunders's life story through intensive research as well as via a series of interviews with the artist over several years. Details of Saunders's early life on a West Tennessee farm and his family's long attachment to the land document a profound influence on his life, outlook, and art. But Saunders was also moved by literature—namely that of William Faulkner, whom he met while earning a master's of fine art at the University of Mississippi. Saunders credits Faulkner with inspiring much of his work, demonstrated in his Spotted Horses, a limited volume of lithographs illustrating Faulkner's short story of the same name, which was published by the University of South Carolina Press in 1989. Now a distinguished professor emeritus of the University of South Carolina, Saunders founded its Art Department's printmaking program as well as a southern printmaker's organization called the Southern Graphics Council. In the more than forty years since its founding the organization, now called SGC International, it has grown well beyond its southern borders and now serves twenty-five hundred members worldwide. A View from the South features more than 120 color images showcasing the themes, ideas, and techniques Saunders has used in his paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, etchings, lithographs, and woodcuts. His art is exhibited throughout the world and is included in many private and public collections, including the Boston Public Library, the U.S. Wildlife Collection in Washington, D.C., and Shanxi University collection in China. A foreword is provided by Charles R. Mack, professor emeritus of art history at the University of South Carolina.




Bunyips


Book Description

Robert Holden enters the bunyips lair to reveal the fascinating literature, folklore and superstitions that have immortalised Australia's most enigmatic creature. Bunyips includes extracts from Australian stories about bunyips, featuring work by Edel Wignell, Rosa Campbell Praed, Catherine Stow, Dal Stivens and others.




Where to Watch Birds in Dorset, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight


Book Description

Whether you're seeking Firecrests or Hawfinch in the New Forest, Osprey in Dorset or eagles on the Isle of Wight, this book tells you where to go, what you'll see and when to see it. Keith Betton's fully revised and updated fifth edition of Where to Watch Birds in Dorset, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight is the essential site guide for any birdwatcher visiting or resident in the area. This book contains a comprehensive review of the area's significant birdwatching sites, providing all the information necessary to make the most of each and every trip, whatever the time of year. This edition also incorporates new sites and revised mapping throughout and has notes on access and target species. This book is an indispensable resource for birders in this bird-rich sweep of southern England.




Sightings


Book Description

A collection of essays shares the author's insights, reflections, and observations on birds and the natural world, as he describes his childhood ramblings in the Tennessee wilderness and his feelings of spiritual meaning, as well as the meaning of the rediscovery of the supposedly extinct ivory-billed woodpecker in terms of the nature of the sacred.




How to Know the Birds


Book Description

"In this elegant narrative, celebrated naturalist Ted Floyd guides you through a year of becoming a better birder. Choosing 200 top avian species to teach key lessons, Floyd introduces a new, holistic approach to bird watching and shows how to use the tools of the 21st century to appreciate the natural world we inhabit together whether city, country or suburbs." -- From book jacket.




American Monsters


Book Description

From pre-Columbian legends to modern-day eyewitness accounts, this comprehensive guide covers the history, sightings and lore surrounding the most mysterious monsters in America—including Bigfoot, the Jersey Devil, and more. Bigfoot, the chupacabra, and thunderbirds aren’t just figments of our overactive imaginations—according to thousands of eyewitnesses, they exist, in every corner of the United States. Throughout America’s history, shocked onlookers have seen unbelievable creatures of every stripe—from sea serpents to apelike beings, giant bats to monkeymen—in every region. Author, investigator, and creature expert Linda S. Godfrey brings the same fearless reporting she lent to Real Wolfmen to this essential guide, using historical record, present-day news reports, and eyewitness interviews to examine this hidden menagerie of America’s homegrown beasts.




PHANTOM MUSTANG


Book Description

PHANTOM MUSTANG by Carroll J. Stephens in memoriam with Harold L. Stephens __________________________________




Travel Tales Monthly


Book Description

Michael Brein’s Travel Tales Monthly Bookazine Issue No. 9 for March 2015 contains among the best travel stories from Michael’s huge collection of about 10,000 travel tales that he has gathered in interviews with nearly 1,750 world travelers and adventurers during his four decades of travel to more than 125 countries throughout the world. Why not laugh yourself silly with this collection of funny, hilarious, gut-wrenching, LOL (laugh out loud) travel humor. Oh yeah, we do our fair share of ridiculous, raucous, belly-achingly funny things when we travel. And, I ask you: is this NOT one of the most important goals of travel—to laugh ourselves stupid? Thank God, the funny happens more than the horrific; the ludicrous more than the lame—travel is never boring and never lacking in wonderful, memorable funny causes célèbre that stay with us for the rest of our lives. Whether falling through someone's roof on a horse in Afghanistan; whether getting soaked by taunting the ‘fountain gods’ on a lawn at a castle; whether being thrown out of a restaurant in Buenos Aires for dancing on the tops of tables; whether chilling your wine in a bidet, the funniest travel moments that make you laugh are a welcome counter to those rare horrible travel events that make you cry. And it is also these memorable stories that remain with us, isn’t it, after all is said and done, in our travels? Feel free to laugh out loud with these travel tales of humor presented here in this current issue of Travel Tales Monthly. For many people, life is all about getting laid, lauded or loaded, but for many of us, it is more about sampling the lives, the cultures, the oddities, the sights, the sounds, the foods, the drinks, and the humor of the peoples of other lands. For me, it is all of the above, but it is also about laughter. I like to laugh much of the time, and probably would ALL the time if I could. Laughing abroad is what makes travel especially memorable. Of course, we remember the times that we cry; but we do, indeed, also remember the times that we laugh. Introduction to Travel Tales of Humor: Funny Stories. Part 1 Travel Tales of Humor: Funny Stories is divided into two parts simply because there is so much material. Part 1 appears here in the current Travel Tales Monthly issue No. 9 Mar 2015 and serves as a general introduction to this subject matter. Part 2 The unabridged, expanded forthcoming ebook Travel Tales of Humor: Funny Stories, part of The Travel Psychologist Travel Tales Series, is a larger volume and includes both Parts 1 and 2. The travel stories in Part 1 consist mainly of the funniest personal travel tales of Michael Brein (me), the author. The travel stories in Part 2 are, largely, the funniest stories of world travelers and adventurers whom I’ve encountered and interviewed throughout my travels over the last four decades to 125 countries. Mostly, your travels will typically be exciting and interesting, but funny things can and do happen to you at almost any turn along the way. The freedom from the typical constraints of home that travel offers us allows us to act and behave in ways that are often atypical and different from how we normally behave at home. Thus, in travel, we can take a few more risks and chances and do a few more silly and funny things that we might not ordinarily do at home. With this expanded propensity for more silliness, of course, comes the opportunity for more funny times, more laughs, and more great memories. For me, I’ve found that I’ve reveled in acting out the ‘Fool’ or the ‘Clown’ in my travels, very often making people laugh at my own expense. It is all in good fun. I’m not typically like this at home but more so in my travels. I hope laughable events happen to you a lot. I sincerely hope that the funny travel tales of humor that appear in these pages make you laugh and give you a hint of what lies in store for you in your own travels.