Chris Merkord

Searching for Pekpek: Cassowaries and Conservation in the New Guinea Rainforest, by Andrew L. Mack, Ph.D. offers readers an exhilarating mix of adventure and scientific insight. In 1987 the vast majority of U.S. tropical biologists worked in the New World tropics, and you could find more U.S. tropical biologists in one Costa Rican research station in one month than in all of Papua New Guinea over a year. For a young Andy Mack, at the start of his research studies in conservation, Papua New Guinea represented a new frontier. Drawn to PNG by the cassowary, a flightless, dinosaur-like bird whose natural shyness belies the damage it can do with its dagger like claws if provoked, Andy was quickly immersed in the complex culture and verdant beauty of the island. In time he came to appreciate and even champion the cause of Papua New Guinea’s people as they struggle to maintain their identities amid globalization and Western efforts at “big conservation.”

The Great Horned Owl is the largest owl found throughout most of North America. Adult owls are between eighteen to 24 inches from head to tail and can have a wing span of more than four feet. Their long ear tufts and cryptic coloration enables them to remain well hidden during the day, often out of sight of sharp-eyed diurnal raptors and eagle-eyed birders. Through more than 130 photographs and illustrations, take an in-depth look into the life of this very impressive and formidable bird. Explore the owls’ food habits, nesting sites, how they raise their young, and the rehabilitation of injured owls. The one-of-a-kind photographs and comprehensive descriptions make this a must-have treasure to be enjoyed by all ages. It is sure to become the go-to reference on the Great Horned Owl.

This easy-to-use identification guide to 280 bird species covering the most commonly seen in Sri Lanka is an ideal, portable guide for residents and visitors alike, written by an experienced birder with a track record for writing to a popular audience. The author’s top quality photographs are accompanied by detailed species descriptions, which include nomenclature, plumage, distribution, habits and habitat. The species accounts cover 75 of the 82 families of birds recorded in Sri Lanka and distinguish between highly scarce migrants and vagrants to explain what a realistic and good ‘country list’ and ‘trip list’ would be for residents and visitors respectively. The user-friendly introduction covers bird topography, bird orders, a novel photographic summary in taxonomic order of all 34 endemic birds that are key target species, and the main sites for viewing the listed species. Also included is a checklist of all of the birds of Sri Lanka encompassing, for each species, its common and scientific names as well as its national status.

The bird-rich peninsula of Malaysia has world-famous birding places like Fraser's Hill and Taman Negara. This MP3-DVD brings for the first time an extensive collection of Birdsounds covering the entire Peninsula. Characteristics of this MP3-DVD: 312 bird species of Peninsular Malaysia 932 recordings with extra information where and when each recording was made 10 hours of birdsounds (aprox. 10 CDs) ready for modern smartphones, Android, iPhone, iPod, iPad and other MP3-players uses 800 Mb on an MP3-player A short manual, checklist, overview of recordings and further background info are included as pdf’s on the disc The aim of this MP3-DVD is to cover the sounds of the resident bird species from Peninsular Malaysia. All recordings have been taken in Peninsular Malaysia (with a few from Singapore and just across the Thai-Malaysian border), to ensure the sounds perfectly reflect what can be heard in this region. There are thus no recordings from far away, from subspecies not occurring in Peninsular Malaysia, which may have quite a different voice. The collection of recordings presented here (932 recordings of 312 species) has a total playing time of about 10 hours, the equivalent of some 10 audio CD's... While this collection is far from a complete overview of all resident species, it actually includes most of the vocalizations commonly heard while exploring nature in Peninsular Malaysia. This is the first time ever such a large collection is being published for Peninsular Malaysia, and it also covers most of the resident species known from Singapore. Included are several sound files per species, e.g. to illustrate different types of vocalizations, to illustrate some degree of individual variation or to document vocalizations from different corners of a bird’s distribution. Obviously, with mainly less than 5 recordings per species, one can only give a flavor of this. Every recording includes embedded information such as English name, Scientific name, Date and time of recording, Locality name, Recordist, and in some cases further remarks or comments about background species. This information can be consulted in standard software like Windows Media Player, iTunes, iPods and smartphones like the iPhone.

Whether traveling through Southeast Asia or relaxing at home, bird lovers will enjoy this thorough and colorful birdwatching guide. A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Southeast Asia is the first comprehensive photographic guide to the birds of mainland Southeast Asia, the Philippines and Borneo. It covers important bird species found in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, as well as southern China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Philippines. Of an estimated 10,000 living bird species in the world, Southeast Asia is home to over 3,000 of them—making this one of the most diverse avifaunal regions on the planet and a bird-watcher's paradise. This comprehensive guide covers over 660 species and has more than 700 color photographs. It is an invaluable guide to anyone planning a visit to Asia who is interested in birds. It gives a distribution map for each species and a checklist at the back. Many of the photographs in this book appear for the first time and have been carefully selected to illustrate the most important species and their key features. The text provides vital information to ensure accurate identifications. A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Southeast Asia is indispensable reading for bird lovers everywhere.

A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Indonesia is the best, most comprehensive photographic guide to the birds of Indonesia. Because of its vast size and geographical location, Indonesia has the world's most diverse avifauna. It boasts of more than 1,600 species—of which 235 rare birds are only found in Indonesia—making it the world's number one travel destination for bird-watching. This bird field guide covers a total of 912 species, including most of the non-migratory and endemic species that are seen only in Indonesia and a number of threatened and endangered species. A photograph and distribution map is given for each bird. Many new photographs of Indonesian birds appear in this volume for the first time and have been carefully selected to show the important characteristics of each bird. The concise text provide vital information, and an index of common names is provided at the back of the book.

A Special Issue of The Journal of Caribbean Ornithology, BirdsCaribbean; Charlottesville, VA: Scholarly & Specialized Publishing. A must-read for birders visiting this lovely, unspoiled island or those interested in Caribbean ornithology. The author, who is the founder of BigPockets, describes the 174 documented wild bird species on Vieques Island, Puerto Rico–the birds’ status, abundance, habitat preference, and their conservation threats. She summarizes the geography, geology, climate, plant communities, avian habitats, and the island’s political, cultural, and ornithological histories. A discussion of the paleornithological record is followed by a discussion of zoogeography, breeding birds, migrants, introduced species, and conservational status. Pertinent information related to status, abundance, breeding records, arrival and departure dates, museum specimen locations, banding records, and conservation status is then provided in Species Accounts.

GUIDE TO THE BIRDS OF ALASKA has been a must-have for Alaska birders for more than thirty years. In the sixth edition, Robert Armstrong provides hundreds of new photographs. Every bird is now illustrated including the casuals and accidentals. This comprehensive guide provides the most current knowledge about the birds in Alaska.

South America has long been known for its bountiful flora and fauna. The richness in bird life has attracted visitors from all over the world and has helped to make South America an increasingly popular wildlife tourist spot. This major new field guide to the birds of South America covers all the passerines (perching birds), with all plumages for each species illustrated, including males, females and juveniles. The text gives information on key identification features, habitat, and songs and calls. Beautiful artwork featured across 195 colour plates appears opposite the relevant text for quick and easy reference. Distribution maps are included, showing where each species can be found and how common it is, to further aid identification.

In a unique new collaboration, Collins have paired up with the respected British Trust for Ornithology, bringing together the most authoritative and up-to-date information in this new field guide to the common birds of Britain and Ireland. This unique new identification guide features all of the birds that have occurred five or more times in Britain and Ireland, including all species that breed regularly in the region, plus those that winter here, or occur as common passage migrants. The book has been written and illustrated as much with the beginner in mind as the experienced birdwatcher. Designed to be used in the field, the text and photographs describe and illustrate the key features needed to identify a species with confidence, and to separate it from similar, or ‘confusion’, species. As a general rule, the species accounts follow the taxonomic running order provided by the British Ornithologist’s Union (BOU). But for the benefit of the reader, in some instances the running order has been juggled subtly so that potentially confusing species are placed side by side. Throughout the book there are special pages that describe the key features needed for separating different families, and groups of birds that share the same habitat. More than 1,200 photographs are featured and many are seen here for the first time. They have been chosen carefully to show not only important identification features but also to give clues to the usual habitat favoured by the bird, and its typical posture. Annotations highlight key identification features that are discussed in the text. Song and call are useful aids to identification, and reference is made to vocalisation for each species. The average size of each bird is included; in most species this is the length, measured from the tip of the bill to the tip of the tail, but in birds that are seen most frequently in flight (such as raptors), the given measurement is wingspan. Relative abundance maps are shown for every species. The darker shading shows where a species is most abundant, and the lighter shades where it is less so. These are based on the very latest information contained within the BTO’s Bird Atlas 2007–11.

The intimate lives of familiar birds as never before seen! Spectacular, stunning, and beautiful close-up photography documents the family lives of more than 50 birds, from the first song of the courting male to the first flight of the fledglings. You'll find images of the male and female, nest construction, the eggs, the parents on the nest, nestlings, feeding time, fledglings taking their first leap, and more. The featured birds include songbirds, urban birds such as raptors and pigeons, water birds, and owls, and all of them are common to North America.

Este atlas es el fruto de casi quince años de trabajo. Un grupo de más de cincuenta investigadores recorrieron la provincia para obtener la información cuantitativa necesaria para confeccionar una serie de mapas que muestran con detalle la distribución de las diferentes aves nidificantes. Los textos, redactados por otros tantos expertos, trazan un retrato del estado de sus poblaciones y proporcionan consejos prácticos para localizar las diferentes especies en el campo. La obra presenta un importante aparato gráfico con imágenes de más de treinta fotógrafos y los dibujos de Lluís Sogorb, que ilustran una volumen que facilitará al amante de la naturaleza en general el disfrute de la observación de las casi 180 especies de aves que podemos encontrar nidificando en la provincia. El resultado es este libro que publica la Universidad de Alicante en coedición con el grupo local de Alicante de SEO-BirdLife.

The up-to-date text covers the identification, voice, habitat, behaviour and range of all the 1270 species and distinctive subspecies of this magnificent bird-rich region. The authoritative text is accompanied by over 140 full-colour plates painted by a range of expert artists and covering major plumage variations. Birds of South-East Asia is a complete field and reference guide to the birds of Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. It also covers a wide range of species found in the Indian subcontinent, China, Taiwan, Sumatra, Java, Bali, Borneo and the Philippines.

Dale Zimmerman's singular memoir details a half-century of ornithological investigations in East Africa, at a time when Africa's fabled wildlife and wild habitats flourished beneath the snows of Kilimanjaro. Set against the political backdrop of the shift from colonial to African rule, Turaco Country documents a field ornithologist's quintessentially African experience, capturing the sights, scents and sounds of a vanishing world. In 1961, Dale Zimmerman set off for Africa, armed with a degree in Botany, years of study of African avifauna, and a keen passion for wild nature. Thus began an adventure that would span a half-century. In the ensuing years, while Dr. Zimmerman was Professor of Biology at Western New Mexico University in Silver City, he continued to explore birdlife on all continents, but always returned to Africa. An acclaimed artist as well as scientist, he co-authored and co-illustrated two field guides, Birds of Kenya and Northern Tanzania and Birds of New Guinea. Zimmerman's first step into Africa led to immersion in the misty Kakamega Forest, where he unraveled mysteries surrounding its little-investigated birdlife. Often with his wife Marian (also an ornithologist and a botanist) and young son Allan (later himself a fine naturalist), he found adventure aplenty among the lions, elephants, hornbills, and exquisite turacos. Generously spiced with photographs taken by the Zimmermans and their friends, Turaco Country sparkles with a life that is uniquely African.

The Malagasy region contains one of the most extraordinary concentrations of biodiversity in the world. Its recognition as a zoogeographic region in its own right has recently been confirmed and, all taxa combined, the region was found to hold the second most distinct assemblage of vertebrates in the world after the Australian region, despite being the smallest of them all. This new field guide in the Helm Field Guides series covers the whole of the Malagasy region, which comprises the unique island of Madagascar and the various islands and archipelagos of the Indian Ocean including the Seychelles, Comoros and Mascarenes (Mauritius, Réunion and Rodrigues). Every resident and migrant species is covered in full detail with a colour distibution map for each species. Vagrants are also treated in detail, but without maps. All species are illustrated on a beautiful series of 124 colour plates, with artwork from John Gale and Brian Small. Conveniently, the plates have been arranged so that all the key species of the various archipelagos are placed together in sections. This is a major work of reference on the birds of the region and will remain the standard text for many years to come.

This authoritative handbook, part of the Helm Identification Guides series, looks in detail at the world's 170 species of robins and chats. This large family of small passerines was formerly considered to be part of the thrush family, Turdidae, but is now usually treated as a separate family, Muscicapidae, together with the Old World flycatchers. Robins and chats are a diverse family comprising both highly colorful and visible species, such as the robin-chats of Africa, as well as some of the most skulking and elusive birds, such as the shortwings of Asia. Many chats, such as the well-known Nightingale, are renowned songsters, and a good number are highly sought-after by world listers for their extreme rarity or simply because they are hard to see. This book discusses the identification and habits of these birds on a species-by-species basis, bringing together the very latest research, with accurate range maps, more than six hundred stunning color photographs that illustrate age and racial plumage differences, and sixty-four superb color plates by the internationally renowned artist Chris Rose. This authoritative and sumptuous book will be an essential purchase for all chat enthusiasts, and will become the standard reference on the subject for many years to come.

A guide to help birders use important, unchanging features of size, shape, body language, and behavior to create impressions of birds and identify them. A highly visual guide to identifying birds in the field based on the important, unchanging features of size, shape, structure, and behavior Birding is an extremely rewarding and fun hobby, but some situations can be frustrating or unsuccessful because of a variety of challenging viewing conditions. This guide to identifying birds offers the holistic “birding by impression” method, which not only helps with these difficult conditions, but also develops an efficient mental identification process using left- and right-brain skills. It begins with a conscious assessment of a bird’s unchanging physical characteristics, including general size, body shape, structural features (bill, legs, neck, and wings), and behavior. Using this approach, birders can quickly assess all birds and distinguish new and uncommon species from familiar ones. They can then examine more detailed field marks to fine-tune the identification. Rather than a traditional field guide, this book presents an interactive how-to approach to a more complete identification process.

This is a new book and is an expanded version of the original guide that covered those species found just in the south west region. It is a photographic Field Guide with over 480 species illustrated and covers the vast majority of resident or visiting birds to all of Western Australia including seabirds and those species found on Christmas Island. It contains information where many reserves are located and also discusses specific areas to visit. Each species listed shows a photograph with extensive text including distribution maps and general specifications. The photographs are generally sharp and clear and should assist greatly with identification. A robust, heavily stitched spine for constant use in the field. 413 pages. A5 format. Full colour print.

The book traces Conor Jameson's travels in search of the Goshawk, a magnificent yet rarely seen (in Britain at least) raptor. Each episode of the narrative arises from personal experience, investigation, and the unearthing of information from research, exploration and conversations. The journey takes him from an encounter with a stuffed Goshawk in a glass case, through travels into supposed Goshawk territories in Britain, to Berlin - where he finds the bird at ease in the city. Why, he wants to know, is the bird so rarely seen in Britain? He explores the politics of birdwatching, the sport of falconry and the impact of persecution on the recent history of the bird in Britain and travels the length of Britain, through central Europe and the USA in search of answers to the goshawk mystery. Throughout his journey he is inspired by the writings of T H White who told of his attempts to tame a Goshawk in his much-loved book. It's a gripping tale on the trail of a most mysterious and charismatic bird.

The Atlas of German Breeding Birds (Atlas Deutscher Brutvogelarten: ADEBAR) represents the first systematic and uniform approach to the recording of Germany’s breeding birds. There are 280 breeding bird species in Germany. Of these, 248 native and 20 non-native species occurred as regular breeding birds in the majority of the mapping years. For a further 12 species (7 native, 5 non-native) records of breeding were only obtained for a single year or for a few years only. The most common by far are the Common Chaffinch and the Common Blackbird, each with a mean of over 8 million territories, followed by the Great Tit with more than 5 million territories. Together with a further 19 species, each of which number more than 1 million pairs or territories, these make up 80% of all breeding birds. On the other hand, many species are rare or in decline, as the Northern Lapwing. The Eurasian Golden Plover, the Woodchat Shrike and the Aquatic Warbler are on the edge of extinction. Only strict protective measures may preserve these species from complete disappearance in Germany. Format 24,5 x 32,5 cm, hardcover, comprehensive information on the breeding distribution and population trends for all German breeding bird species, illustrations by Paschalis Dougalis, 800 pages. In German with English summaries.

The new Atlas was published at the end of November 2014. It is an SOS/BTO joint project that ran concurrently with the national Atlas project and is the first Atlas of bird distribution within the county. It is a superb production, with habitat photos and maps generally showing breeding and winter distributions down to the 2km square level.