The Sibley Guide to Bird Life & Behavior - Hardcover

David Allen Sibley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679451234 ISBN 13: 9780679451235

Publisher: Knopf, 2001

Synopsis

“Once in a great while, a natural history book changes the way people look at the world. In 1838, John ames Audubon’s Birds of America was one...In 1934, Roger Tory Peterson produced Field Guide to the Birds...Now comes The Sibley Guide to Birds.”

Thus did The New York Times, in 1999, greet David Allen Sibley’s monumental book, which has quickly been established nationwide as the peerless, standard bird identification guide.

The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior is the new landmark book from David Allen Sibley. Designed to enhance the birding experience and to enrich the popular study of North American birds, the book combines more than 795 of his full-color illustrations with authoritative text by 48 expert birders and biologists. In this new guide Sibley takes us beyond identification, to show us how birds live and what they do.

Introductory essays outline the principles of avian evolution, life cycle, body structure, flight dynamics, and more. The 80 family-by-family chapters describe the amazing range of behavior dictated by birds’ biology and environment. Among the subjects covered and illustrated are:

--molts and plumages
--habitats
--food and foraging
--vocalizations and displays
--courtship and breeding
--rearing of young
--migration and movements
--scientific groupings
--introduced species
--accidental species
--anatomy
--flight patterns
--nests and eggs
--conservation
--global distribution

Accessibly written, superbly designed and organized, and brilliantly illustrated, The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior is an indispensable source of information on the avian life around us.

About this title

About the Author

David Allen Sibley began seriously watching and drawing birds in 1969, at age seven. Author and illustrator of the nationally acclaimed National Audubon Society: The Sibley Guide to Birds, he lives in Concord, Massachusetts.

Chris Elphick, editor and contributing author, holds a Ph.D. in Ecology and Conservation Biology from the University of Nevada, Reno. He is currently a research scientist at the University of Connecticut, where he focuses on the conservation of waterbirds, especially shorebirds. He lives in Storrs, Connecticut.
John B. Dunning, Jr., editor and contributing author, earned a Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of Arizona. He is an Associate Professor of Wildlife Ecology at Purdue University and lives in Lafayette, Indiana.

From the Back Cover

"Identification books answer what; The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior answers why. Why is that dipper walking casually along the bottom of the stream? Why are those crows ganging up on that hawk? The opening chapters serve as a readable crash course in basic ornithology; the individual bird-family sections settle arguments, provide stats, and give the current conservation status. This is the book to turn the casual bird-watcher into a birder; it's suffused with David Sibley's quiet, concerned wonder."
--Ty Burr, Entertainment Weekly, November 16, 2001

Reviews

This follow-up to The Sibley Guide to Birds, an LJ Best Book of 2000, focuses on biology and behavior. With nearly 800 color illustrations by David Sibley, it should be gorgeous.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Not to be confused with standard field guides to birds, this far-reaching companion to last year's The Sibley Guide to Birds complements the best of those avian catalogues that birders take along on their quests for more species to add to their "life lists." Here, the editors have compiled essays from leading ornithologists on bird anatomy, ethology and behavior to round out bird-watchers' knowledge. This National Audubon Society publication details the 80 families of birds found in North America, with hundreds of Sibley's acclaimed full-color paintings, maps, charts and illustrations. Topics range from the familiar migration, feeding, mating, nesting to the esoteric, including feather structure, eye configuration, DNA classification, evolution, hybridization and much more. Readers will learn about bird respiration, metabolism, excretion, vocalizations, senses and intelligence, among other subjects. Although the information is as detailed as a textbook, the writing is jargon-free, light and accessible. Well conceived in structure and conducive to easy reference, the volume ends with a detailed glossary, professional biographies of its dozens of scholarly contributors and a convenient species checklist, based upon the American Ornithologists' Union guidelines. Whether one is a serious expeditionary birder or a casual backyard observer of avian life, this book is a must-have reference. 796 full-color paintings.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

One year after publication of the widely praised Sibley Guide to Birds (reviewed here in January) comes this companion volume, which tells how birds live and what they do. Readers will learn about feathers, feet and flight dynamics; food, foraging and courtship; breeding, migration and conservation threats. The text-to-illustration ratio is, quite logically, much larger in this new volume, and the text is a powerhouse of information compiled by Sibley and his co-editors from 48 leading birders and biologists. The 796 small, enchanting, full-color paintings are by Sibley.

Editors of Scientific American

Birdwatchers flocked to Sibley's extraordinary field guide and surprise best seller, The Sibley Guide to Birds. Sibley and associates now present this prodigious companion volume, providing information about birds' lives and behavior the logical next step after identification. Part 1 ("The World of Birds") discusses basic avian biology, including form, distribution, population, and conservation, in about 100 pages. Part 2 ("Bird Families of North America"), to which over 40 ornithologists contributed, uses a standard format to describe taxonomy, foraging, breeding, range, nests, eggs, longevity, conservation, and more. Enough information is presented to satisfy readers' curiosity but not overwhelm them with scientific detail. The 796 Sibley color illustrations throughout the text are outstanding (seen only in black and white in the review galley). Posture, aspect, feet, feathers, flight, nests, habitat, courtship, and much more are captured in small but elegant paintings. An understandable, accessible, and informative next step to field identification, this is a required addition for every collection. (Index not seen..
- Nancy Moeckel, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679451234
• ISBN 13: 9780679451235
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 608