The Sibley Guide to Bird Life & Behavior

Front Cover
Alfred A. Knopf, 2001 - Nature - 588 pages
"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.

From inside the book

Contents

Contents
8
Flight Form and Function
15
Origins Evolution
39
Copyright

94 other sections not shown

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About the author (2001)

David Allen Sibley, son of the well-known ornithologist Fred Sibley, began seriously watching and drawing birds in 1969, at age seven. Since 1980, he has traveled throughout the North American continent studying the natural world, both on his own and as a leader of bird-watching tours. He is the author of several guides to bird identification including The Sibley Guide to Birds, The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior, Sibley's Birding Basics, The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America, and The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America.

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