Birding Stories / Adventures

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A Parrot Without a Name: The Search for the Last Unknown Birds on Earth
Don Stap
$12.76
239 pages - Paperback

This is a great book! It tells the true story of John O'Neill and Ted Parker at work in the South American tropics and the discovery of a new bird. It is a fascinating insight into the work done by ornithologists. Ted Parker was considered by most birders and scientists to be the best in the world at what he did. He could identify thousands of birds by sound alone! After reading this, you will understand the profound loss the birding community suffered when Ted Parker was killed in a plane crash in Ecuador.

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Kingbird Highway: The Story of a Natural Obsession That Got a Little Out of Hand
Kenn Kaufman
$16.10
318 pages - Hardback

At sixteen, Kenn Kaufman dropped out of high school and hit the road, hitching back and forth across America, from Masko to Florida, Maine to Mexico. Maybe not all that unusual a thing to do in the seventies, but what Kenn was searching for was a little different: not sex, drugs, God, or even self, but birds. The chance to see a rare bird would send him hitching nonstop from Pacific to Atlantic and back again. When he was broke he would pick fruit or do odd jobs to earn what little money he needed -- in a year, traveling eighty thousand miles, he spent less than a thousand dollars. When he started out, his goal was to set a record, but along the way he began to realize that at this breakneck pace he was only looking, not seeing. What had been a game become a quest for a deeper understanding of the natural world as well as the human world, for the people he met along the way proved as fascinating and rare as the birds. Kingbird Highway is a unique coming-of-age story, combining a lyrical celebration of nature with wild and sometimes dangerous adventures, starring a colorful cast of characters.
This is a great book! If you ever have had the opportunity to hear Kenn speak and wonder how he knows so much about birds – the answer is here! I loved the story, but, for me, it was also a fascinating history lesson, filling in so many details about birders I have met over the past few years. In a way, this book describes "The Big Bang" -- the beginning of modern birding -- where everyone came together at one time and place looking for birds on the prairies of North Dakota!

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Tales of a Low-Rent Birder
Pete Dunne
$8.76
157 pages - Paperback

Pete Dunne has collected 25 of his essays about birds and birding. Taken together, they capture Pete's love and respect for the birds he watches, his concern over human threats to their survival, and his tolerance, even affection, for the human "odd birds" that birding attracts.

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A Naturalist in New Guinea
Bruce M. Beehler, John Anderton (Illustrator)
$29.95
251 pages - Hardback

A very interesting story of Bruce's work and scientific discoveries in New Guinea.