The Life of The Hummingbird

Gift inscription by previous owner. Within these pages, Alexander Skutch and Arthur B. Singer, both world-renowned ornithologists, have combined forces to produce a balanced and exciting account of the life of Hummingbirds--their appearance and structure, where they live, how they fly, what they eat, their relations with flowers, their temperament, how they court and build their nests and rear their young, their enemies and prospects for survival. Alexander Frank Skutch (1904 - 2004) was a naturalist and writer. His stream of publications on the lives and habits of Neotropical birds over a 70-year span stimulated whole areas of inquiry into avian sociobiology and life-history strategies. A member of the AOU since 1930, he became an Elective Member in 1938, Fellow in 1945, and Honorary Fellow in 1979, and received the Brewster Medal in 1950. Author of some 200 scientific papers and 20 books on birds, he also wrote nearly 50 articles and four books on philosophy and three autobiographical books that blended both. Skutch's singularly vivid and graceful writing carried his philosophy of nature to a much wider audience. The legacy of Alexander Skutch to Neotropical ornithology is, quite simply, the largest body of natural-history information ever collected by a single observer.…