Book: An Enchantment of Birds by Richard Cannings

Description

In these delightful meditations, biologist and bird lover Richard Cannings weaves stories of his personal encounters with birds into fascinating descriptions of their behavior, anatomy, and evolution. He muses over the meadowlarks’ ability to hide their nests so completely that he has seen only two in a lifetime spent searching for them; the trumpeter swan, as picky as a two-year old, devouring potatoes and carrots but turning up its beak at Brussels sprouts; the northern gannet, with its snowy plumage, black wingtips, and startling blue eyes; the little saw-whet owl, which dabbles in bigamy and even trigamy; and more than two dozen other birds. Covering the entire continent, from the cacophony of a seabird colony on the shores of the Atlantic to a symphony of snow geese on the autumn plains to songbird courtship in the alpine tundra of the Rockies, An Enchantment of Birds informs and entertains, in one fell swoop.

Published in partnership with the David Suzuki Foundation.

About the Author

Richard Cannings is a renowned naturalist, conservationist, and lecturer on birds and bird habitats. He works as a consulting biologist assessing endangered species and organizing bird population surveys, and he can be heard on the CBC Radio 1 program BC Almanac as its regular birding expert. He is the author of Birds of Interior BC and the Rockies, An Enchantment of Birds, and The Rockies: A Natural History, and is co-author of Birds of Southwestern British Columbia and British Columbia: A Natural History. He lives in Penticton, BC.

Donald Gunn‘s original artwork has appeared in hundreds of publications including: An Enchantment of Birds, The Natural History of British Columbia, The Rodents and Lagomorphs of BC, and The Carnivores of BC.