Richard Cannings 
An Enchantment of Birds 
Memories from a Birder’s Life

In these delightful meditations, biologist and bird lover
Richard Cannings weaves stories of his personal encounters with birds into fascinating descriptions of their behavior, anatomy, and evolution. He muses over the meadowlarks’ ability to hide their nests so completely that he has seen only two in a lifetime spent searching for them; the trumpeter swan, as picky as a two-year old, devouring potatoes and carrots but turning up its beak at Brussels sprouts; the northern gannet, with its snowy plumage, black wingtips, and startling blue eyes; the little saw-whet owl, which dabbles in bigamy and even trigamy; and more than two dozen other birds. Covering the entire continent, from the cacophony of a seabird colony on the shores of the Atlantic to a symphony of snow geese on the autumn plains to songbird courtship in the alpine tundra of the Rockies,
An Enchantment of Birds informs and entertains, in one fell swoop.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Western Meadowlark

Western Kingbird

Evening Grosbeak

Bohemian Waxwing

California Quail

Black-capped Chickadee

Pygmy Nuthatch

White-headed Woodpecker

Calliope Hummingbird

Western Bluebird

Common Poorwill

Flammulated Owl

Northern Saw-whet Owl

Northern Pygmy-Owl

Northern Flicker

Clark’s Nutcracker

American Crow

Common Raven

Golden Eagle

White-tailed Ptarmigan

Horned Lark

Northern Gannet

Tufted Puffin

Black-footed Albatross

Bald Eagle

American Dipper

American Coot

Turkey Vulture

Gray Flycatcher

Western Grebe

Über den Autor

Richard Cannings works as a consulting biologist in Naramata, British Columbia, assessing endangered species and organizing broad-scale bird population surveys, among many other projects. He teaches field ecology at the University of British Columbia and was curator of the Cowan Vertebrate Museum at the university for fifteen years. He is the author of
The Rockies: A Natural History and, with Sydney Cannings, of
British Columbia: A Natural History and
The B.C. Roadside Naturalist.