The Gift of Birds: True Encounters with Avian Spirits (Travelers' Tales Guides) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1885211414 ISBN 13: 9781885211415

Publisher: Travelers' Tales, 1999

Synopsis

Whether it roots us in our own backyard or takes us across continents, watching birds calls us to stillness and demands our keen attention to the details that flicker around us. This collection of stories will appeal to bird lovers everywhere.

About this title

Review:

When a bird stops to glance sideways at us, it is inviting us into its world, if only for a moment. A bird's song can transport us into distant realms of the imagination; the sight of birds in flight can reconnect us to childhood, and to what matters in life.

Bird enthusiasts Larry Habegger and Amy Carlson have assembled an extended celebration of the restorative and mysterious powers of our winged fellow travelers, enlisting well-known and emerging writers alike. Among the standouts of their anthology is Sigurd Olson's homage to the loons of the wilderness lake country of northern Minnesota; Diane Ackerman's lyrical memoir of a sojourn among the endangered short-tailed albatrosses of East Asia, whose flight "is the wind's way of thinking about itself"; David James Duncan's provocative essay "Bird-Watching as a Blood Sport," which addresses the unfortunate power humans have over the animal world; Jake Page's excursion into the byways of the minds of humans and redbirds; and, best of all, Peter Matthiessen's journey to Siberia in search of the sandhill crane, "the oldest and largest of the earth's flying creatures."

Birdwatching enthusiasts and students of nature writing alike will find much of value in this lively, well-chosen collection. --Gregory McNamee

From Library Journal:

This anthology of 28 essays (five are original but most are excerpted from books) by 26 authors deals with how birds have affected people, primarily in a spiritual manner. The writers are for the most part naturalists but include such well-known disparate personalities as Peter Matthiessen and Alice Walker, as well as top birding gurus Kenn Kaufman and Pete Dunne. These thoughtful, entertaining essays range from Central Park to Australia, from the Himalayas, Bali, and Africa to Utah. Dunne writes about how watching a birdfeeder brought joy to his ill father, Walker about how she was inspired by the maternal devotions of a hen in Bali. Others tell of encounters with birds of prey, rare cranes, and albatrosses; a person who gathers roadkills to feed vultures; or watching the antics of loons and pelicans. A stimulating collection of nature writing from an unusual perspective; for most collections.AHenry T. Armistead, Free Lib. of Philadelphia
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Travelers' Tales
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1885211414
• ISBN 13: 9781885211415
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352
• Editor: Habegger Larry, Carlson Amy Greimann