Parts Unknown: A Naturalist's Journey in Search of Birds and Wild Places - Hardcover

Gallagher, Tim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1585742759 ISBN 13: 9781585742752

Publisher: UNKNO, 2001

Synopsis

Twenty-four essays range from accounts of birding in the icy regions of the North and descriptions of rare raptors in California to musings on diverse bird populations in New Jersey, the Everglades, and California's Santa Catalina Island.

About this title

About the Author

Tim Gallagher is an award-winning writer, editor, and nature photographer with more than twenty years of experience in publishing. He is currently editor in chief of Living Bird, the flagship publication of the famed Cornell Lab of Ornithology. He has written scores of articles on wildlife, nature, and photography.

From the Back Cover

When Tim Gallagher was a child, he went to a museum exhibit of early maps. These tattered, ornately drawn charts often had one thing in common - a vast, black area to the north labeled Parts Unknown. Tim was fascinated with the idea of places completely unknown to mapmakers, and he made it his goal to visit and photograph these "unexplored" regions (and its avian inhabitants) for himself.Parts Unknown is the result of that quest. Here is a remarkable new collection of essays on Tim's lifelong fascination with birds, and how it has evolved into a daring brand of "adventure birding." Join Tim as he dangles on ropes at Gyrfalcon nest cliffs in northern Greenland and Iceland, traps migrating Arctic Peregrine Falcons on barrier islands in the Gulf of Mexico, journeys in an open boat for hundreds of miles up the west coast of Greenland to survey bird colonies, and learn about the continuing efforts to save the endangered California Condor. With a stunning full-color insert of Tim's finest photographs, Parts Unknown is an extraordinary look into an unexplored world. (6 1/4 x 9 1/4, 244 pages, color photos)

Reviews

The blank "parts unknown" areas in a display of antique maps intrigued Gallagher as a boy. A growing interest in falconry led to travels farther and farther afield as the teenager grew more adept in the study of birds of prey in the wild. Observing nests required rock-climbing skills, and finding eagles and hawks meant trips into increasingly remote areas. By honing his writing talents and working with bird researchers in the field, Gallagher was able to turn his avocation into a life work. This collection of essays spans the period from 1978 to the present and focuses on subjects as disparate as the plight of the California condor, the World Series of Birding, and photographing sandpipers behind grain elevators. Gallagher has a conversational writing style that lends immediacy to the narrative. The text is complemented by an insert of the author's color photographs of many of the species he mentions. Overall, this is a nice addition for large natural history collections. Nancy Bent
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Author of Wild Bird Photography and editor of The Living Bird, the excellent quarterly of Cornell's Laboratory of Ornithology, Gallagher has a special affinity for the Arctic and hawks. This volume is concerned with exotic locales such as India, Iceland, Greenland, northern Manitoba, and Alberta, and the birds of those regions. However, Gallagher also writes of the wildness found in our own backyards New Jersey, coastal Texas, and Southern California and of tracking the sounds birds make when they fly overhead at night, which is the manner in which most migrate. This evocative book is presented in three parts: "Parts Unknown" (exotic places), "Rare Raptors" (condors, falcons, eagles, and hawks), and "Birding and Ornithology" (a potpourri the Everglades, birding marathons, wildlife law enforcement, Santa Catalina Island, etc.). Delightful, informed reading with excellent photographs; highly recommended for all wildlife collections. Henry T. Armistead, Free Lib. of Philadelphia
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: UNKNO
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1585742759
• ISBN 13: 9781585742752
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 227