Flight Calls: Exploring Massachusetts through Birds

Flight Calls: Exploring Massachusetts through Birds

by John R. Nelson
Flight Calls: Exploring Massachusetts through Birds

Flight Calls: Exploring Massachusetts through Birds

by John R. Nelson

Paperback(First Edition)

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Overview

The paths of different birds look like double helixes, flowing strands of hair, and migrating serpents, and they beckon with calls that have definite meanings. These mysterious creatures inspire growing numbers of birders in their passionate pursuit of new species, and writer John R. Nelson is no exception. In Flight Calls, he takes readers on explorations to watch, hear, and know Massachusetts's hummingbirds, hawks, and herons along the coasts and in the woodlands, meadows, and marshes of Cape Ann, Cape Cod, the Great Marsh, Mount Auburn Cemetery, the Quabbin wilderness, Mount Wachusett, and elsewhere.

With style, humor, and a sense of wonder, Nelson blends his field adventures with a history of the birding community; natural and cultural history; bird stories from authors such as Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, and Mary Oliver; current scientific research; and observations about the fascinating habits of birds and their admirers. These essays are capped off with a plea for bird conservation, in Massachusetts and beyond.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781625344700
Publisher: Bright Leaf
Publication date: 08/22/2019
Edition description: First Edition
Pages: 342
Sales rank: 1,124,008
Product dimensions: 5.20(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

JOHN R. NELSON is professor emeritus at North Shore Community College. His essay "Funny Bird Sex" was awarded a 2018 Pushcart Prize.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

1 Flight Calls An Introduction 1

2 Birding a Patch 14

3 Whip-poor-will Synchronicity 31

4 Birds of the Promised Land 34

5 Watching Gulls with Emerson on Cape Tragabigzanda 50

6 Birding on Two Wheels 70

7 On a Street with No Name A Rant 80

8 The Birding John Nelsons 86

9 Twitcher's Temptation 93

10 Rarity Envy 101

11 Sympathy Birds in Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts Literature 113

12 For Birds and People The Brookline Bird Club 134

13 Mr. Forbush and Mr. White 156

14 The Great Marsh Shorebird Swarms and Swallow Waves 165

15 Sauntering through a Graveyard Garden 184

16 Death and the Rose-Breasted Grosbeak 199

17 Cape Cod Following Footprints and Bird Tracks in Sand 208

18 Ravens' Home West from My Patch 227

19 Convalescence 245

20 Further Adventures in Four-Legged Birding 250

21 Geezer Birding 254

22 Our Birds 260

23 Territories 276

24 The Birds after Us 293

References 309

Recommended Reading List 315

Index 319

What People are Saying About This

Wayne R. Petersen

Flight Calls is somewhere between a personal memoir, a true-life adventure, and a birder's personal journal. In addition, anyone reading this book will surely be impressed with Nelson's grasp of literature, both ornithological and historic.

John Hanson Mitchell

This is an entertaining account of the world that local birds inhabit as well as the unique breed of Homo sapiens that chooses to spend its free time chasing down and identifying birds. Through Nelson's descriptions and explorations of local bird habitats, readers will come to appreciate the biological diversity of the state and region.

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