Living on the Wind by Scott Weidensaul

Living on the Wind by Scott Weidensaul

Bird migration is the world's only true unifying natural phenomenon, stitching the continents together in a way that even the great weather systems fail to do. Scott Weidensaul follows awesome kettles of hawks over the Mexican coastal plains, bar-tailed godwits that hitchhike on gale winds 7,000 miles nonstop across the Pacific from Alaska to New Zealand, and myriad songbirds whose numbers have dwindled so dramatically in recent decades. Migration paths form an elaborate global web that shows serious signs of fraying, and Weidensaul delves into the tragedies of habitat degradation and deforestation with an urgency that brings to life the vast problems these miraculous migrants now face. Living on the Wind is a magisterial work of nature writing.

Scott Weidensaul, an author and naturalist who grew up in the midst of the ancient Eastern frontier, has written more than two dozen books, including Living on the Wind: Crossing the Globe with Migratory Birds, which was a Pulitzer Prize nominee.