The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.43 (961 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0099447045 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 368 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-06-21 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Illustrated with colour plates by the renowned Canadian wildlife artist Robert Bateman, "The Birds of Heaven" captures the beauty of an endangered species and the dilemma of a planet in ecological crisis.. From the scarcely populated Amur Valley in Siberia, he travels gradually west and south across Asia, through Australia, Africa and Europe (where the crane population has made a resurgence), ending up in the American Gulf Coast. Once regarded as messengers from heaven, presaging longevity and good fortune, cranes appear in the ancient myth and legend of many cultures. In "The Birds of Heaven", Peter Matthiessen has woven his accounts of journeys undertaken over more than a decade in search of the fifteen remaining species of crane. Today, they evoke the retreating wilderness, the vanishing horizons of clean water, earth and air upon which their species - and ours too - depends for survival. He is joined by conservationists, scientists and enthusiasts of all nationalities, along with indigenous people - from Mongolian herdsmen to Aboriginals in Australia - whose fates are entwined with the cranes
H. Schneider said Grus, mostly. Schiller's Ibykus said to 'his' cranes: We come from afar and beg for a hospitable roof. He travels 'with' cranes in the same sense as author Peter Matthiessen: we can look for them and we can meet them accidentally, but we can hardly travel with them,though the plight of Homo may not differ much from that of Grus, as far as the degradation of natural habitats is concerned. The cranes are in double trouble: as migratory birds, they are facing reduction in breeding grounds as well as in wintering grounds. In Schiller's poem, the itinerant musician Ibykus sees the cran. Amazon Customer said Five Stars. Wonderful book by a great author and person. Sheri said A stellar book on heavenly birds. The teaming of two giants in natural history - author Peter Matthiessen and artist Robert Bateman - to cover one of the world's most revered and endangered groups of birds produced a book whose appeal reaches well beyond "craniacs" and other bird lovers.Matthiessen's accounts of his globe-spanning travels in search of cranes incorporate extensive historical, cultural, and scientific background information (from Confucius, Chaucer, and Marco Polo to Bertolt Brecht and Aldo Leopold), providing a deeper context for the stories of these majestic birds and their struggles
But The Birds of Heaven also serves as an ecological warning: "Perhaps more than any other living creatures, they evoke the retreating wilderness, the vanishing horizons of clean water, earth, and air upon which their species--and ours, too, though we learn it very late--must ultimately depend for survival." --Shawn Carkonen. These majestic, mythic, and notoriously shy birds, capable of soaring at heights of 20,000 feet, are often fond of remote and rugged places, so just locating the birds can be difficult enough, determining an accurate number often impossible. Despite his many years of adventure and wide travels, each crane sighting is still a thrill for him, and his curiosity and contagious enthusiasm bring the book alive. Matthiessen's search for 15 different species of cranes has taken him to hidden corners of Siberia, China, Mongolia, Tibet, Sudan, and Australia (where Atherton cranes were not even discovered until