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159 books match the query 'Birds' and 2 start with r

cover of Raising Whoopers: Saving North America’s Whooping Cranes

Raising Whoopers

Saving North America’s Whooping Cranes

Maria Parrott-Ryan

Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2027

The inspiring story of ingenuity and dedication that saved a remarkable bird from the brink of extinction.

The distinctive whoop-whoop call of the whooping crane could once be heard across North America. By the middle of the twentieth century, however, habitat loss and hunting pushed these towering birds—the tallest on the continent—to the brink of extinction, with only fifteen individuals left in the wild. In the 1970s, two young visionaries founded the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin, launching innovative efforts that would help change the species’ future and bring “whoopers” back into our wetlands.

Rich with fascinating natural history, larger-than-life personalities, and unforgettable adventures, Raising Whoopers tells the remarkable true story of one of North America’s most ambitious wildlife conservation efforts. Young readers will meet unforgettable cranes with names like Gee Whiz and Whoopsie, along with conservation heroes who hatched chicks by hand, performed crane courtship dances, and piloted ultralight aircraft across hundreds of miles to teach young birds how and where to migrate. Through triumphs, setbacks, and decades of perseverance, these wildlife conservationists demonstrated how creativity, science, and dedication can make a difference for endangered wildlife.

Geared toward ages 10–14, this engaging and accessible book, written in conjunction with the International Crane Foundation, introduces young readers to the captivating world of whooping cranes—and the scientists and ordinary citizens who worked together to ensure these birds had a future. The book concludes by showing that conservation is not just the work of experts—it’s something anyone can be part of. By connecting the story of whooping cranes to wildlife and habitats in our own communities, Raising Whoopers inspires the next generation to look more closely at the natural world and consider the role they can play in protecting it.

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cover of Raptor: A Journey through Birds

Raptor

A Journey through Birds

James Macdonald Lockhart

University of Chicago Press, 2017

From the merlin to the golden eagle, the goshawk to the honey buzzard, James Macdonald Lockhart’s stunning debut is a quest of beak, talon, wing, and sky. On its surface, Raptor is a journey across the British Isles in search of fifteen species of birds of prey, but as Lockhart seeks out these elusive predators, his quest becomes so much more: an incomparably elegant elegy on the beauty of the British landscape and, through the birds, a journey toward understanding an awesome power at the heart of the natural world—a power that is majestic and frightening in its strength, but also fragile.

Taking as his guide the nineteenth-century Scottish naturalist and artist William MacGillivray, Lockhart loosely follows the historical trail forged by MacGillivray as he ventured from Aberdeen to London filling his pockets with plants and writing and illustrating the canonical A History of British Birds. Linking his journey to that of his muse, Lockhart shares his own encounters with raptors ranging from the scarce osprey to the successfully reintroduced red kite, a species once protected by medieval royal statute, revealing with poetic immediacy the extraordinary behaviors of these birds and the extreme environments they call home.

Creatures both worshipped and reviled, raptors have a talon-hold on the human heart and imagination. With his book, Lockhart unravels these complicated ties in a work by turns reverent and euphoric—an interweaving of history, travel, and nature writing at its best. A hymn to wanderers, to the land and to the sky, and especially to the birds, Raptor soars.
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