100 Flying Birds

"Flight is the essence of birdness. I strive to illustrate the beauty and complexity of avian flight." -- Peter Cavanagh 100 Flying Birds: Photographing the Mechanics of Flight offers a vivid and varied glimpse into the world of birds. A white-tailed eagle plummeting through a Japanese sky, a brown pelican striking a silhouette against an Ecuadorian sunset, an Atlantic puffin carrying its fish dinner above the Scottish coast, or a keel-billed toucan gliding through a Costa Rican jungle canopy; readers will marvel at the splendor of birds in flight while learning the techniques to capture these gravity-defying moments from a world-class nature photographer. For each picture, author and photographer Peter Cavanagh shares his most evocative thoughts: the challenges of the shoot, the beauty of the location, and the curiosities of the species. Bird people will enjoy the bird photographs and facts, travelers will gobble up the tales of distant parts, and photographers will absorb the technical details. For instance, readers might be surprised to see that a very slow shutter speed can freeze the motion of hummingbird wings. Peter Cavanagh has collected 100 beautiful photos spanning a wide range of species. The subjects of each of the 11 chapters are: Eagles Hummingbirds Gulls and Terns Small Waterbirds Large Waterbirds Ducks, Geese and Swans Raptors Condors and Corvids Cranes Songbirds Favorites

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER SILVER MEDALIST for the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature From the bestselling author of H is for Hawk, a brilliant and insightful work about our relationship to the natural world Our world is a fascinating place, teeming not only with natural wonders that defy description, but complex interactions that create layers of meaning. Helen Macdonald is gifted with a special lens that seems to peer right through it all, and she shares her insights--at times startling, nostalgic, weighty, or simply entertaining--in this masterful collection of essays. From reflections on science fiction to the true story of an Iranian refugee's flight to the UK, Macdonald has a truly omnivorous taste when it comes to observations of both the banal and sublime. Peppered throughout are reminisces of her own life, from her strange childhood in an estate owned by the Theosophical Society to watching total eclipses of the sun, visits to Uzbek solar power plants, eccentric English country shows, and desert hunting camps in the Gulf States. These essays move from personal experiences into wider meditations about love and loss and how we build the world around us. Whether more journalistic in tone, or literary--even formally experimental--each piece is generous, lyrical, and speaks to one another. Macdonald creates a strong thematic undertow that quietly takes the reader along piece to piece and sets them down, finally, at a place they've never been before.

One hundred entertaining and informative essays from the popular public radio feature program, BirdNote, accompanied by original illustrations throughout--an illuminating volume for bird and nature lovers across North America. Here are the best stories about our avian friends from the public radio show BirdNote, each brief essay illuminating the life, habits, or songs of a particular bird. Why do geese fly in a V-formation? Why are worms so good for you--if you're a robin? Which bird calls, "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?" From wrens that nest in cactuses to gulls that have a strange red dot on their bills--these digestible and fascinating bird stories are a delightful window to the winged world. A foreword by John W. Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and an introduction by Gordon Orians, professor emeritus of biology at the University of Washington, are also included. Contains web links to the audio version of each story, with bird sounds.

A tear-out book with 100 colorful, bird-themed sheets to fold into super-fast darters, soaring gliders, stunning swoopers and graceful drifters. Includes detailed folding instructions for the four different designs, plus tips on folding, launching flying and looking after your flock of paper birds.

LECTURING BIRDS ON FLYING For the past few decades, the financial world has often displayed an unreasonable willingness to believe that "the model is right, the market is wrong," in spite of the fact that these theoretical machinations were largely responsible for the stock market crash of 1987, the LTCM crisis of 1998, the credit crisis of 2008, and many other blow-ups, large and small. Why have both financial insiders (traders, risk managers, executives) and outsiders (academics, journalists, regulators, the public) consistently demonstrated a willingness to treat quantifications as gospel? Nassim Taleb first addressed the conflicts between theoretical and real finance in his technical treatise on options, Dynamic Hedging. Now, in Lecturing Birds on Flying, Pablo Triana offers a powerful indictment on the trustworthiness of financial theory, explaining—in jargon-free plain English—how malfunctions in these quantitative machines have wreaked havoc in our real world. Triana first analyzes the fundamental question of whether financial markets can in principle really be solved mathematically. He shows that the markets indeed cannot be tamed with equations, presenting a long and powerful list of obstacles to prove his point: maverick unlawful human actions rule the markets, unexpected and unimaginable events shape the markets, and historical data is not necessarily a trustworthy guide to the future of the markets. The author then examines the sources of origin of many prevalent theories and mathematical dictums. He details how the field of financial economics evolved from a descriptive discipline to an abstract one dedicated to technically concocting professors' own versions of how such a world should work. He goes on to explain how Wall Street and other financial centers became eager employers of scientists, and how scientists became eager employees of financial firms. Triana concludes with an in-depth discussion of the most significant historical episodes of theory-caused real-life market malaise, with a strong emphasis on the current credit crisis. In the end, Lecturing Birds on Flying calls for the radical substitution of good old-fashioned common sense in place of mathematical decision-making and the restoration to financial power of those who are completely unchained to the iron ball of classroom-obtained qualifications.

Learn what America's most venerable ornithological institution has discovered about birds in its past 100 years of study.

Find out where the world's heaviest flying bird lives, how it stays safe from enemies, and how the young learn to fly.

Pip is a little bird who wants nothing more than to eat the fresh fruit high up in the trees. There's just one problem - The birds on her island don't fly. All the other birds think the idea sounds ridiculous. Afterall, Whoever Heard of a Flying Bird?But that won't stop Pip from trying. Surrounded by others that think she'll never succeed, Pip is determined to overcome adversity and self-doubt and reach the fruit. And if she tries hard enough, she might just succeed?