Mid South Birding Companion

Get the guide to bird-watching in the Midwest that’s part how-to book, part field guide, and part journal. Peaceful, relaxing, and inspiring—birding can yield a lifetime of satisfaction. For some, simple observation of birds is enough to fill them with joy. Others prefer to make it more interactive, striving to see a variety of species and learning to identify them. If you’re among the latter, the Midwest Birding Companion is just for you. Written by award-winning author, naturalist, and wildlife photographer Stan Tekiela (known throughout the country for his best-selling bird identification guides), the Midwest Birding Companion is part how-to book, part field guide, and part journal. Read Stan’s tips for identifying birds, and learn about everything from reporting a rare bird to dealing with injured birds. The field guide section organizes nearly 150 species by color. When you see a yellow bird, go to the yellow section to discover what it is. There, you can also find range maps, as well as such information as nest descriptions, migration habits, and tips for attracting the species to your feeder. At the bottom of every page, there’s room to log information about when and where you saw that species. You can also keep track of your birding life list on the book’s closing pages—so you’ll always have a running total of the different birds you’ve seen. The Midwest Birding Companion is ideal for birding in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. Use your birding companion on its own, or pair it with Stan’s bird identification guides. It will enhance your birding experience and bring even more enjoyment to the hobby that you love.

For amateurs and seasoned birders, this quintessential A to Z guide provides accounts of the basic elements of bird life, as well as easy-to-access information on such subjects as physiology and anatomy, terms and jargon, definitions and etymology, and ornithological groupings.

Embrace your love of birdwatching, every day of the year! By nature, bird lovers are naturalists and collectors, and you know how easy it is to devote hours upon hours of time—a lifetime, in fact—to your hobby. Birdwatcher’s Daily Companion is a fun, sophisticated way to be newly inspired, every day of the year. Inside is insight into everything from how to identify look alike species to planting a hummingbird garden, planning birding travel, and so much more. Throughout the birdwatcher’s year, you’ll find: Mondays / bird-finding tips and techniques Tuesdays / all about species identification Wednesdays / ideas for birding excursions and travel Thursdays / learn to find and attract birds to your backyard Fridays / birds in history and mythology Saturdays & Sundays / birding projects and activities

From the award-winning birder and author of Birds of Prey, an authoritative, information-packed guide to distinguishing North American birds. In this book, bursting with more information than any field guide could hold, the well-known author and birder Pete Dunne introduces readers to the “Cape May School of Birding.” It's an approach to identification that gives equal or more weight to a bird's structure and shape and the observer's overall impression (often called GISS, for General Impression of Size and Shape) than to specific field marks. After determining the most likely possibilities by considering such factors as habitat and season, the birder uses characteristics such as size, shape, color, behavior, flight pattern, and vocalizations to identify a bird. The book provides an arsenal of additional hints and helpful clues to guide a birder when, even after a review of a field guide, the identification still hangs in the balance. This supplement to field guides shares the knowledge and skills that expert birders bring to identification challenges. Birding should be an enjoyable pursuit for beginners and experts alike, and Pete Dunne combines a unique playfulness with the work of identification. Readers will delight in his nicknames for birds, from the Grinning Loon and Clearly the Bathtub Duck to Bronx Petrel and Chicken Garnished with a Slice of Mango and a Dollop of Raspberry Sherbet.

A Companion to Chinese Archaeology is an unprecedented, new resource on the current state of archaeological research in one of the world’s oldest civilizations. It presents a collection of readings from leading archaeologists in China and elsewhere that provide diverse interpretations about social and economic organization during the Neolithic period and early Bronze Age. An unprecedented collection of original contributions from international scholars and collaborative archaeological teams conducting research on the Chinese mainland and Taiwan Makes available for the first time in English the work of leading archaeologists in China Provides a comprehensive view of research in key geographic regions of China Offers diverse methodological and theoretical approaches to understanding China’s past, beginning with the era of established agricultural villages from c. 7000 B.C. through to the end of the Shang dynastic period in c. 1045 B.C.

When we think of archaeology, most of us think first of its many spectacular finds: the legendary city of Troy, Tutankhamun's golden tomb, the three-million-year-old footprints at Laetoli, the mile-high city at Machu Picchu, the cave paintings at Lascaux. But as marvelous as these discoveries are, the ultimate goal of archaeology, and of archaeologists, is something far more ambitious. Indeed, it is one of humanity's great quests: to recapture and understand our human past, across vast stretches of time, as it was lived in every corner of the globe. Now, in The Oxford Companion to Archaeology, readers have a comprehensive and authoritative overview of this fascinating discipline, in a book that is itself a rare find, a treasure of up-to-date information on virtually every aspect of the field. The range of subjects covered here is breathtaking--everything from the domestication of the camel, to Egyptian hieroglyphics, to luminescence dating, to the Mayan calendar, to Koobi Fora and Olduvai Gorge. Readers will find extensive essays that illuminate the full history of archaeology--from the discovery of Herculaneum in 1783, to the recent finding of the "Ice Man" and the ancient city of Uruk--and engaging biographies of the great figures in the field, from Gertrude Bell, Paul Emile Botta, and Louis and Mary Leakey, to V. Gordon Childe, Li Chi, Heinrich Schliemann, and Max Uhle. The Companion offers extensive coverage of the methods used in archaeological research, revealing how archaeologists find sites (remote sensing, aerial photography, ground survey), how they map excavations and report findings, and how they analyze artifacts (radiocarbon dating, dendrochronology, stratigraphy, mortuary analysis). Of course, archaeology's great subject is humanity and human culture, and there are broad essays that examine human evolution--ranging from our early primate ancestors, to Australopithecus and Cro-Magnon, to Homo Erectus and Neanderthals--and explore the many general facets of culture, from art and architecture, to arms and armor, to beer and brewing, to astronomy and religion. And perhaps most important, the contributors provide insightful coverage of human culture as it has been expressed in every region of the world. Here entries range from broad overviews, to treatments of particular themes, to discussions of peoples, societies, and particular sites. Thus, anyone interested in North America would find articles that cover the continent from the Arctic to the Eastern woodlands to the Northwest Coast, that discuss the Iroquois and Algonquian cultures, the hunters of the North American plains, and the Norse in North America, and that describe sites such as Mesa Verde, Meadowcraft Rockshelter, Serpent Mound, and Poverty Point. Likewise, the coverage of Europe runs from the Paleolithic period, to the Bronze and Iron Age, to the Post-Roman era, looks at peoples such as the Celts, the Germans, the Vikings, and the Slavs, and describes sites at Altamira, Pompeii, Stonehenge, Terra Amata, and dozens of other locales. The Companion offers equally thorough coverage of Africa, Europe, North America, Mesoamerica, South America, Asia, the Mediterranean, the Near East, Australia and the Pacific. And finally, the editors have included extensive cross-referencing and thorough indexing, enabling the reader to pursue topics of interest with ease; charts and maps providing additional information; and bibliographies after most entries directing readers to the best sources for further study. Every Oxford Companion aspires to be the definitive overview of a field of study at a particular moment of time. This superb volume is no exception. Featuring 700 articles written by hundreds of respected scholars from all over the world, The Oxford Companion to Archaeology provides authoritative, stimulating entries on everything from bog bodies, to underwater archaeology, to the Pyramids of Giza and the Valley of the Kings.