north america

Part natural history, part artist’s diary, this book documents the extraordinary effort to place a series of public memorials to birds driven to extinction in modern times. As a chronicle of humankind’s impact on our changing world and a moving record of dwindling biodiversity, the project is an ode to vanished times and vanished species. The Great Auk, Labrador Duck, Passenger Pigeon, Carolina Parakeet, and Heath Hen once populated North America from the shores of Labrador and New York to the midwestern plains. Across the continent the skies were once nearly black with Passenger Pigeons whose disappearance, like the buffalo’s, was thought to be inconceivable. As works of site-specific environmental art, the sculptures featured in The Lost Bird Project were placed in the location where the bird was last seen in the wild and are now permanent public sculpture installations at a wide range of sites, from Newfoundland to Florida, Ohio to Martha’s Vineyard. Ten years in the making, The Lost Bird Project has been the subject of a feature-length documentary film that premiered in New York City in December 2011. This book launches in concert with the Fold a Flock origami bird initiative in schools and Audubon centers across the United States (http://foldtheflock.org/).

A refreshed and updated edition of this comprehensive title. Easy to use, this astonishing resource covers every bird species found in North America as well as all the seasonal visitors. Entries are organised by family group, the taxonomic organization newly updated to match current American Ornithologists’ Union guidelines. Within a family, each separate bird entry has dozens of tips and illustrations on species’ genders, age groups, behaviour, habitats, nesting and feeding habits, and migration routes.

This pocket guide takes the authority and reputation of National Geographic’s top-selling “Field Guide to the Birds of North America” and makes it accessible for those new to birding. This book meets the same standards of excellence, trimmed down in size and content, tailored to the needs of an eager beginner who may not want to invest in a more comprehensive field guide. Affordable, beautifully illustrated, and easy to carry, this entry-level birding title will welcome newcomers to an activity enjoyed by millions.

This title is not held in stock but we are happy to supply on special order. Please contact us. This marvellous edition of Audubon’s Birds of America displays all 435 of Audubon’s brilliant handcoloured engravings in exquisite reproductions taken from the original plates of the Audubon Society’s archival copy of the rare Double Elephant Folio. Although many attempts have been made to re-create the magnificent illustrations in Audubon’s masterpiece, nothing equals the level of fidelity or scale achieved in this high-quality edition. Completely reorganized and annotated by Roger Tory Peterson, who was American’s best known ornithologist, and issued with the full endorsement and cooperation of the Audubon Society, this volume is the first, in more than a century and a half since its publication, to rearrange the plates in a more scientific order. Peterson’s fascinating introduction places Audubon in the context of the history of American ornithological art and also reproduces a wide sampling of the work of Audubon’s notable predecessors and disciples, including Peterson’s own justly famous paintings. This new systematic arrangement of the prints, complete with thorough, informative commentaries about each bird, not only makes the Birds of America more accessible than ever before, but made it possible to correct many of the problems or errors in Audubon’s original edition that later scholarship revealed.