Grass, Sky, Song: Promise And Peril In World Of Grassland Birds - Hardcover

Herriot, Trevor

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1554680387 ISBN 13: 9781554680382

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 2009

Synopsis

Readers, booksellers and literary judges alike fell in love with Trevor Herriot’s stunning debut book, River in a Dry Land. In his remarkable new work, he draws on 20 years’ experience as an observer of nature to reveal the spirit of the grassland world, and the uniqueness of its birds. 

   Facing the demise of the very creatures that he has always depended on for his sense of home, Herriot sets out to discover why birds are disappearing and what, if anything, we can do to save them. He takes us out to local pastures where a few prairie songbirds sing and nest, as well as to the open rangeland where doomed populations of burrowing owls and greater sage-grouse cling to survival. In a narrative that is at once profound, intimate and informative, we meet passionate bird researchers and travel in the footsteps of 19th-century botanist John Macoun, the last naturalist to see the Great Plains in its pre-settlement grandeur.  

   In the spirit of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines, this arresting book fills the heart with wonder and reveals that any hope for the endangered wildness in North America’s heartland depends on people making the right choices—on farms, in legislatures and in board rooms, and even at the supermarket. Beautifully illustrated with the author’s own drawings, Grass, Sky, Song awakens our senses to the glory of all birds and calls for a renewed bond between culture and nature.

About this title

About the Author

TREVOR HERRIOT is a grassland conservationist and naturalist who writes about human and natural history on the northern Great Plains. His last book, Grass, Sky, Song: Promise and Peril in the World of Grassland Birds was a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year and one of Quill & Quire's 15 Books That Mattered Most in 2009, and it was shortlisted for the Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-fiction and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing (Nonfiction).

His first book, River in a Dry Land: a Prairie Passage (2000), received several national awards and a nomination for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-fiction. His second book, Jacob’s Wound: a Search for the Spirit of Wildness (2004), was nominated for several awards, including a short-listing for the Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction.

Trevor's writing has appeared in The Globe and Mail and Canadian Geographic, as well as in several anthologies. He has written two radio documentaries for CBC's Ideas and is a regular guest on CBC Radio Saskatchewan’s Blue Sky.

He and his wife, Karen, have four children and live in Regina.

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1554680387
• ISBN 13: 9781554680382
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288