and build your wings on the way down.
Kobi Yamada
Book collecting terms defined and illustrated. Selected used and out-of-print books occasionally for sale.
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Sometimes you just have to take the leap and build your wings on the way down. Kobi Yamada Book collecting terms defined and illustrated. Selected used and out-of-print books occasionally for sale. |
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It's about time that someone with a website called MyWings paid tribute to the creatures that make flying look so effortless...
Ocean Birds, by Lofgren, Lars. Crescent Books: New York, 1987. Edition: Later printing. ISBN: 0517645467. Hardcover, 8.5 by 11.5 inches, 240 pages. Yellow cloth with gilt lettering on cover and spine. Over 220 full-coler illustrations and numerous line drawings, maps, and other graphic illustrations. Includes bibliography and index.
Condition: Near Fine in Very Good Plus jacket. Some rubbing to jacket, and a crease (no tear) to lower back margin of jacket.
Contents: From the jacket
. . . Captures and celebrates the grace and beauty of these extraordinary creatures, presenting an authoritative account of their evolution, behavior, ecology, and remarkable adaptations to pelagic life.
$15.00
The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession, by Obmascik, Mark. Free Press: New York, 2004. Edition: Second printing. ISBN: 0743245458. Hardcover, 8vo, 268 pages. Quarter bound in blue cloth over gray boards; red metallic ink on spine. Includes bibliography and index.
Condition: Near Fine in a Fine jacket. Page edges beginning to tan.
Contents: Publisher's Note:
A classic in the making -- an account of the biggest year in birdwatching history.
In the USA, some 50 million people lay claim to being bird-watchers or “birders,” spending billions of dollars on birding-related travel and membership fees every year. A select, and utterly obsessed, few compete in one of the world’s quirkiest contests -- the race to spot the most species in North America in a single year. And 1998 wasn’t just a big year. It was the biggest. The Big Year is Pulitzer Prize-winner Mark Obmascik’s account of what was to become the greatest birding year of all time.
It was freak weather conditions that ensured all previous records were broken, but what becomes clear within the pages of this classic portrait of obsession is that while our feathered friends may be the objective of the Big Year competition, it’s the curious activities and behavioural patterns of the pursuing homo sapiens that are the real cause for concern. It is a contest that reveals much of the human character in extremes. Such are the author’s powers of observation that he brilliantly brings to life and gets under the skin of these extraordinary, eccentric and obsessive birders while empathizing with and eventually succumbing to the all-consuming nature of their obsession.
$5.00
A Brand-New Bird, by Birkhead, Tim. Basic Books-Perseus Books Group: New York, 2003. Edition: First edition. ISBN: 0465006655. Hardcover, 8vo, 5.75 by 8.5 inches, 268 pages. Quarter bound in black over red; silver lettering on spine. Illustrated with eight plates of black and white photographs, plus other black and white illustrations as vignettes in the text.
Condition: As New with a remainder mark in a Near Fine jacket. Jacket is lightly rubbed and shows slight delamination in upper right front corner.
Contents: From the jacket
Behavioral ecologist Tim Birkhead describes how the rather plain but sweet-voiced green bird that was discovered by Spanish explorers in the 1300s became a craze in Renaissance Europe, how breeders gradually turned its green plumage to yellow, how [Hans] Duncker and [Karl] Reich combined genetic science with bird-breeding lore to produce an almost-red canary, and how British breeders were finally able to successfully produce a red canary in the 1960s. But more than just a fascinating account, this story makes a scientific turning point: this was the first instance of plucking specific genes from one creature and incorporating them into another.
The hunt for the red canary invoked all of the deep issues that trouble genetic engineering decades later: the nature of genes and how they work, the specter of eugenics, and the relative roles of nature and nurture in determining how an organism takes shape. A Brand-New Bird is the compelling tale of an important episode in the history of genetics and of two amateur scientists who unwittingly managed to be decades ahead of their time.
$12.00