SY MONTGOMERY, BIRDOLOGY: ADVENTURES WITH A PACK OF HENS, A PECK OF PIGEONS, CANTANKEROUS CROWS, FIERCE FALCONS...
- Street:
- Village Books
- Additional:
- 1200 Eleventh Street
- City:
- Bellingham ,
- Province:
- Washington
- Postal Code:
- 98225
- Country:
- United States
SY MONTGOMERY, BIRDOLOGY: ADVENTURES WITH A PACK OF HENS, A PECK OF PIGEONS, CANTANKEROUS CROWS, FIERCE FALCONS, HIP HOP PARROTS, BABY HUMMINGBIRDS, AND ONE MURDEROUSLY LARGE LIVING DINOSAUR
Sy Montgomery—naturalist, bestselling author of the immensely popular The Good Good Pig, documentary scriptwriter, and radio commentator—explores the complex lives of our feathered friends with rich detail and her trademark personal zeal.
Using stories about her real-life encounters, Montgomery relates the science and natural history of birds, restoring both our awe and connection to the winged creatures we see every day and yet take for granted. In spite of their wildness, strangeness, and differences—and the millennia-long divergence from our common ancestor and our disparate evolutionary paths—birds are able to form bonds with humans and share emotional and intellectual capacities remarkably like our own. Sy writes: “Birds have been trying to educate me since I was a child. I have always loved watching and reading about and learning from them. But even more importantly, birds always come into my life at critical moments to enrich my spirit and enlarge my heart.”
Each chapter in Birdology tells about a relationship or adventure with a bird whose species or personality illustrates a different, essential aspect of what makes a bird a bird. Sy introduces us to the creative, friendly chickens—named “The Ladies”—who live in her backyard. These “Ladies” blow away myths about chickens being stupid because they clearly possess knowledge completely different from our own. She takes us to Australia to find the dinosaur-like cassowary, and to her falconry studies, where she learns that, to a hawk, hunting is everything. Sy also meets flocks of pigeons, all racers who are experts at finding their way home, and dances with Snowball the cockatoo on her birthday. She is even able to hold baby hummingbirds in her hands as she helps nurse them back to health with a professional rehabber.
Along the way, Sy reveals the 7 Essential Truths about Birds: Birds Are Individuals; Birds Are Dinosaurs; Birds Are Made of Air; Birds Are Fierce; Birds Find Their Way Home; Birds Can Talk; and Birds Are Everywhere. A wide-ranging picture of the diverse, fascinating avian world, Birdology is a natural history of birds-cum-personal narrative that informs, entertains, and astonishes.
Sy Montgomery writes for children as well as adults. Among her award-winning books are The Good Good Pig, Journey of the Pink Dolphins, Spell of the Tiger, and Search for the Golden Moon Bear. She has made four trips to Peru and Brazil to study the pink dolphins of the Amazon; and on other expeditions, she was chased by an angry silverback gorilla in Zaire; bitten by a vampire bat in Costa Rica; undressed by an orangutan in Borneo; and hunted by a tiger in India. She also worked in a pit crawling with eighteen thousand snakes in Manitoba; handled a wild tarantula in French Guiana; and swam with piranhas, electric eels, and dolphins in the Amazon. For this book, Sy took years of falconry lessons and worked with a rehabilitator to raise (and later release to the wild) orphaned baby hummingbirds born the size of bumblebees, and traveled to Australia to see the most dangerous birds in the world. She lives in New Hampshire.
2012 Chuckanut Writers Conference
