{"title":"Birkhead Tim","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"birds-and-us-book-tim-birkhead-9780691239927","title":"Birds and Us","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom award-winning author and ornithologist Tim Birkhead, a sweeping history of the long and close relationship between birds and humans\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Since the dawn of human history, birds have stirred our imagination, inspiring and challenging our ideas about science, faith, art, and philosophy. We have worshipped birds as gods, hunted them for sustenance, adorned ourselves with their feathers, studied their wings to engineer flight, and, more recently, attempted to protect them. In \u003ci\u003eBirds and Us,\u003c\/i\u003e award-winning writer and ornithologist Tim Birkhead takes us on a dazzling epic journey through our mutual history with birds, from the ibises mummified and deified by Ancient Egyptians to the Renaissance fascination with woodpecker anatomy--and from the Victorian obsession with egg collecting to today's fight to save endangered species and restore their habitats.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Spanning continents and millennia, \u003ci\u003eBirds and Us\u003c\/i\u003e chronicles the beginnings of a written history of birds in ancient Greece and Rome, the obsession with falconry in the Middle Ages, and the development of ornithological science. Moving to the twentieth century, the book tells the story of the emergence of birdwatching and the field study of birds, and how they triggered an extraordinary flowering of knowledge and empathy for birds, eventually leading to today's massive worldwide interest in birds--and the realization of the urgent need to save them.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Weaving in stories from Birkhead's life as scientist, including far-flung expeditions to wondrous Neolithic caves in Spain and the bustling guillemot colonies of the Faroe Islands, this rich and fascinating book is an unforgettable account of how birds have shaped us, and how we have shaped them.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51005847994641,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51005851336977,"sku":"NIN9780691239927","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51693602242833,"sku":"CIN0691239924VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51727075344657,"sku":"CIN0691239924G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0691239924.jpg?v=1751295408"},{"product_id":"great-auk-book-tim-birkhead-9781399415750","title":"The Great Auk","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe life, death and afterlife of one of the true icons of extinction, the Great Auk\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe great auk was a flightless, goose-sized bird superbly adapted for life at sea. Fat, flush with feathers and easy to capture, the birds were in trouble whenever sailors visited their once-remote breeding colonies. Places like Funk Island, off north-east Newfoundland, became scenes of unimaginable slaughter, with birds killed in their millions. By 1800 the auks of Funk Island were gone. A scramble by private collectors for specimens of the final few birds then began, a bloody, unthinking destruction of one of the world’s most extraordinary species.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut their extinction in 1844 wasn’t the end of the great auk story, as the bird went on to have a remarkable afterlife; skins, eggs and skeletons became the focus for dozens of collectors in a story of pathological craving and unscrupulous dealings that goes on to this day.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn a book rich with insight and packed with tales of birds and of people, Tim Birkhead reveals previously unimagined aspects of the bird’s life before humanity, its death on the killing shores of the North Atlantic, and the unrelenting subsequent quest for its remains.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe great auk remains a symbol of human folly and the necessity of conservation. 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