Birds of Tropical America: A Watcher's Introduction to Behavior, Breeding and Diversity

Why are tropical birds like parrots and quetzels so much more colorful than temperate bird species? How can a vulture soaring thousands of feet above the canopy spot a dead mouse on the rain forest floor? Hilty, zoologist and leader of birding tours throughout South and Central America, offers an interesting, lively discussion of these and other matters touching on rain forest bird communities, migration, courtship rituals and nesting habitats, feather color and patterns, foraging techniques and song patterns. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

In the fifth in Chapters' splendid Curious Naturalist series, Hilty, who has led birding expeditions to Central and South America and the Caribbean, supplies not a field guide to species identification but rather a natural history of tropical birds. He writes about tropical diversity, nesting habits, the structure of a rain forest bird community, biogeography, Andean genealogy, bird migration within the tropics, bird color and patterns, seed dispersal, foraging techniques, courtship rituals, and song patterns. This is a fascinating book for enthusiastic birders and stay-at-home naturalists alike. George Cohen