Thomas Dunlap shows how bird guides have changed with science and popular interest and how birding's twin activities, conservation and recreation, have over the last 120 years shaped our understanding of nature and supported its preservation as part of the nation and our lives.

The transformation of sound recording into a scientific technique in the study of birdsong, as biologists turned wildlife sounds into scientific objects. Scientific observation and representation tend to be seen as exclusively visual affairs. But scientists have often drawn on sensory experiences other than the visual. Since the end of the nineteenth century, biologists have used a variety of techniques to register wildlife sounds. In this book, Joeri Bruyninckx describes the evolution of sound recording into a scientific technique for studying the songs and calls of wild birds and asks, what it means to listen to animal voices as a scientist. The practice of recording birdsong took shape at the intersection of popular entertainment and field ornithology, turning recordings into objects of investigation and popular fascination. Shaped by the technologies and interests of amateur naturalism and music teaching, radio broadcasting and gramophone production, hobby electronics and communication engineering, birdsong recordings traveled back and forth between scientific and popular domains, to appear on gramophone recordings, radio broadcasts, and movie soundtracks. Bruyninckx follows four technologies—the musical score, the electric microphone, the portable magnetic tape recorder, and the sound spectrograph—through a cultural history of field recording and scientific listening. He chronicles a period when verbal descriptions, musical notations, and onomatopoeic syllables represented birdsong and shaped a community of listeners; later electric recordings struggled with notions of fidelity, realism, objectivity, and authenticity; scientists, early citizen scientists, and the recording industry negotiated recording exchange; and trained listeners complemented the visual authority of spectrographic laboratory analyses. This book reveals a scientific process fraught with conversions, between field and laboratory, sound and image, science and its various audiences.

Whether as sources of joy and pleasure to be fed, counted, and watched, as objects of sport to be hunted and killed, or as food to be harvested, wild birds evoke strong feelings. Sean Nixon traces the transformation of these human passions for wild birds from the early twentieth century through the 1970s, detailing humans’ close encounters with wild birds in Britain and the wider North Atlantic world. Drawing on a rich range of written sources, Passions for Birds reveals how emotional, subjective, and material attachments to wild birds were forged through a period of pronounced social and cultural change. Nixon demonstrates how, for all their differences, new traditions in birdwatching and conservation, field sports, and bird harvesting mobilized remarkably similar feelings towards birds. Striking similarities also emerged in the material forms that each of these practices used to bring birds closer to people – hides and traps, nets and ropes, and binoculars. Wide ranging in scope, Passions for Birds sheds new light on the ways in which wild birds helped shape humans throughout the twentieth century, as well as how birds themselves became burdened with multiple cultural meanings and social anxieties over time.

My name is Sath... My name is Sathariel, actually. I am one of those who people call ha-Satan. Yes, it means “adversary” in Aramaic and yes, it is “adversary of God”. But for some reason, everyone has forgotten that those who you nicknamed like this, were first and foremost the defenders of people, who stand by you before a Heavenly court. It was providence we didn’t choose. It was decided instead for us. You, people, have given us many names, but none of them was correct, and you people, have given us functions completely unfamiliar to us. We were deities to you at first, then we became the outcasts. And we were Iyrin, the Watchers, who guard and protect you. And who decides if we’ve done our jobs well? It would be foolish to make excuses now. Who am I to do this? My name is Sathariel and it means “the one who is on the other side of God”. But I’m just an archivist who writes time. Every moment of time, from the beginning of time. Who am I? I’m just one of the Brethren, one among two hundred of “the fallen”. But now... now I want to tell you our real story.

A diary of a birder's ideal year follows the author and his wife on their birding trips to the Arctic, the Everglades, the Northeast, the Southwest, and Canada.

Musaicum Books presents the greatest historical novels, adventure classics, legends, romance novels and war stories set in Scottish highlands and moors. Contents: Robert Louis Stevenson: Kidnapped Catriona Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses The Master of Ballantrae: A Winter's Tale Weir of Hermiston Walter Scott: Waverley Guy Mannering The Antiquary Rob Roy Ivanhoe Kenilworth The Pirate The Fortunes of Nigel Peveril of the Peak Quentin Durward St. Ronan's Well Redgauntlet Woodstock The Fair Maid of Perth Anne of Geierstein Old Mortality The Black Dwarf The Heart of Midlothian The Bride of Lammermoor A Legend of Montrose Count Robert of Paris Castle Dangerous The Monastery The Abbot The Betrothed The Talisman John Buchan: The Thirty-Nine Steps The Three Hostages Huntingtower Castle Gay The Power-House John Macnab Sir Quixote of the Moors John Burnet of Barns A Lost Lady of Old Years The Half-Hearted Salute to Adventurers Midwinter Witch Wood The Free Fishers O. Douglas: Olivia in India The Setons Penny Plain Ann and Her Mother Pink Sugar The Proper Place The Day of Small Things Priorsford Taken by the Hand Jane's Parlour The House That Is Our Own George MacDonald: David Elginbrod Alec Forbes of Howglen Robert Falconer Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood What's Mine's Mine The Elect Lady Heather and Snow Salted with Fire Malcolm The Marquis of Lossie Sir Gibbie Donal Grant J. M. Barrie: Auld Licht Idylls A Window in Thrums The Little Minister Sentimental Tommy Tommy and Grizel