The Sibley Guide to Bird Life & Behavior - Hardcover

David Allen Sibley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679451234 ISBN 13: 9780679451235

Publisher: Knopf, 2001

Synopsis

“Once in a great while, a natural history book changes the way people look at the world. In 1838, John ames Audubon’s Birds of America was one...In 1934, Roger Tory Peterson produced Field Guide to the Birds...Now comes The Sibley Guide to Birds.”

Thus did The New York Times, in 1999, greet David Allen Sibley’s monumental book, which has quickly been established nationwide as the peerless, standard bird identification guide.

The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior is the new landmark book from David Allen Sibley. Designed to enhance the birding experience and to enrich the popular study of North American birds, the book combines more than 795 of his full-color illustrations with authoritative text by 48 expert birders and biologists. In this new guide Sibley takes us beyond identification, to show us how birds live and what they do.

Introductory essays outline the principles of avian evolution, life cycle, body structure, flight dynamics, and more. The 80 family-by-family chapters describe the amazing range of behavior dictated by birds’ biology and environment. Among the subjects covered and illustrated are:

--molts and plumages
--habitats
--food and foraging
--vocalizations and displays
--courtship and breeding
--rearing of young
--migration and movements
--scientific groupings
--introduced species
--accidental species
--anatomy
--flight patterns
--nests and eggs
--conservation
--global distribution

Accessibly written, superbly designed and organized, and brilliantly illustrated, The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior is an indispensable source of information on the avian life around us.

About this title

Review

From the creator of the seminal field guide, The Sibley Guide to Birds, comes another indispensable book for bird watchers. This veritable bible to the world of birds is the collaborative effort of 48 expert birders and biologists, who combine scientific accuracy and detail with an easily readable and well-organized format. How does a tiny chickadee survive subzero temperatures? How do flocks of birds synchronize their flights? How can an albatross cross miles of ocean without flapping its wings? Which bird brains are actually intelligent? It's all here in essays giving an overview of avian evolution, biology, and the aerodynamics of flight and in chapters devoted to the 80 bird families of North America, each one detailing taxonomy, habitats, feeding, breeding, vocalizations, migrations, and more. Concerned about declining populations, Sibley also discusses the conservation status of each species and the factors that threaten them. This fascinating source of information is destined to be a well-thumbed companion. -- Lesley Reed

From the Back Cover

"Identification books answer what; The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior answers why. Why is that dipper walking casually along the bottom of the stream? Why are those crows ganging up on that hawk? The opening chapters serve as a readable crash course in basic ornithology; the individual bird-family sections settle arguments, provide stats, and give the current conservation status. This is the book to turn the casual bird-watcher into a birder; it's suffused with David Sibley's quiet, concerned wonder."
--Ty Burr, Entertainment Weekly, November 16, 2001

Edition details

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0679451234
• ISBN 13: 9780679451235
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 608