Customer Reviews

Atlas of Bird Migration: Tracing the Great Journeys of the World's Birds

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Very good book that explains how iceages on earth aids the evolution of birds, how birds follow SUN in daytime, Stars in the night time, if it is cloudy and are flying on Sea how they can use earth magnetic field to find thier way. This book explains where birds breed in the spring-summer times and migrate to warmer places in fall-winter. As the morning SUN warms up the ground, the air heats up. The birds use this rising hot air help them in soaring to new heights.

This book engineers bird migration, explains how migration evolved, how birds decide the time of travel, how they use the natural phenomina like thermal soaring, how the wing shape and size are related to its flight - like sea birds have long, thin wings, geese have heavy wings etc.

Then this book talks about specifics like how swans migrate, Geese migrate, Albatross migrate and you can find specifics about sea, land, north american, eurasian birds.

This excellent book makes an attempt to describe what the migration of birds is all about.While this bird migration is immensely widespread,involves many billions of birs,and happens all over the world;it seems no book could ever do this subject justice;this book does give a good overall idea of what it is all about and why.
The book is a joy to read and interesting to someone who has a great knowledge about birds as well as someone who simply wants to learn the basics. The book is constructed of the finest quality paper and construction and would stand up to a lot of hard use as in a public library.It is filled with supurb photographs and illustrations as you will ever come ascoss on the subject.The book deals with all kinds of species migration from those birds that migrate from one end of the world to the other,such as the Arctic Tern to some of the mountain species which move up and down the mountains for only a few hundreds of yards.It also covers the various families such a the Albatroses,Hummingbirds,Owls,Songbirds,Raptors and from all over the world. Some might criticize the book because of it doesn't mention one species or another but no book of only 176 pages could even scratch the surface of the nearly 10,000 species worlswide.Also, the information is necessarily very basic and in no way could it be considered complete or detailed as it would certainly be possible to write a whole book on nothing but one species;and then not cover everything. The book has a detailed index and a short list of books for "further reading";but likewise this is only a short list of the many books that are available on the subject.

Very good graphs, illustrations and explanations about bird migration. Worth the money.

This book is beautifully illustrated and covers the world for anyone desiring a very general coverage of bird migrations. However, for data covering the migrations of individual bird species, the book creates deep disappointment. After searching the Internet for information covering the migrations of a host of bird species, just a series of maps showing main migration routes involving different bird species (and easy to include in a book) would have greatly enhanced the value of this work. One of the most valuable maps that I came across, for example, by Bird Life International, shows very clearly the annual migrations to and from of the willow warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus), eastern race (yakutensis), which annually undertakes the longest migration journey of any songbird (11,300 km). As a final comment, it becomes clear that the joint effort of the authors creating the Atlas of Bird Migration would have greatly benefited from consultations with professional map makers and a focus upon a selection of the key migration paths of individual bird species. Atlas of Bird Migration: Tracing the Great Journeys of the World's Birds

Lavishly illustrated, and covering most migration routes, this one is a delightful way to start still another chapter in ornithology. Really shows the complexity of all life around us.
Just buy it, - your kids will love it too!

Got this for my wife for Christmas. She is a serious birder, and requested it. She was real impressed with the overall look and layout of the book. Made a nice gift...