Natural History Of The Swainson S Warbler

The Swainson's Warbler (Limnothlypis swainsonii) is one of the least known of songbirds in southern United States. It is unusually appealing to the student of birds because it is hard to find and because its forbidding habitat is challenging. Studies of its life history and ecology were made by the author principally in canebrakes along the Ocmulgee River a few miles south of Macon, Georgia, Arkansas, Virginia, South Carolina, and West Virginia.

Describes sixty species of North American warblers.

Detailed assessment of the relative abundance, seasonal occurrence, distribution, and habitat use of birds in the Kilbuck and Ahklun mountain region of Alaska.

Host to a large and diverse bird population as well as a long human history, Virginia is arguably the birthplace of ornithology in North America. David W. Johnston's History of Ornithology in Virginia, the result of over a decade of research, is the first book to address this fascinating element of the state's natural history. Tertiary-era fossils show that birds inhabited Virginia as early as 65 million years ago. Their first human observers were the region's many Indian tribes and, later, colonists on Roanoke Island and in Jamestown. Explorers pushing westward contributed further to the development of a conception of birds that was distinctively American. By the 1900s planter-farmers, naturalists, and government employees had amassed bird records from the Barrier Islands and the Dismal Swamp to the Blue Ridge and Appalachian Mountains. The modern era saw the emergence of ornithological organizations and game laws, as well as increasingly advanced studies of bird distribution, migration pathways, and breeding biology. Johnston shows us how ornithology in Virginia evolved from observations of wondrous creatures to a sophisticated science recognizing some 435 avian species. David W. Johnston taught ornithology at the University of Virginia's Mountain Lake Biological Station for nearly two decades and has edited numerous ecological studies as well as the Journal of Field Ornithology and Ornithological Monographs.