Customer Reviews

Extreme Birds: The World's Most Extraordinary and Bizarre Birds

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Noted bird author/authority Dominic Couzens and Firefly Books have combined to produce this drop-dead gorgeous photo and word tribute to some of our world's most exotic, unique and/or downright strange birds. Whether you're a rabid birder or just love to look at lovely, over-size pix of birds, you'll enjoy this book.

EXTREME BIRDS tops out at 287 pages and is divided into categories: Extreme Form; Extreme Ability; Extreme Behavior; and Extreme Families. Paging through "Extreme Forms," you find birds with the widest wingspan, the biggest eyes, the strongest claws, the lightest bones, the longest tongue and the biggest belly. Under "Extreme Ability," you'll come across birds that are rated as the fastest swimmer, have the fastest wing beat, are the biggest binge eaters, the most prolific breeders and the best mimic. Checking out "Extreme Behavior" will produce info and photos relating to the cleverest hunter, the smartest scrounger, the craziest suitor and the best avian soap opera. Entries in "Extreme Familiies" include shortest courtship, sneakiest bigamist, warmest nest, bravest chick, fiercest defender of the nest and so on. All wonderfully entertaining and informative!

The photographs that illustrate these notable birds are from a variety of agencies such as Foto Natura, FLPA, Minden Pictures, Photolibrary, Panda Photo and other sources. Simply put, the photos in EXTREME BIRDS are magnificent - crisp, colorful, evocative and altogether charming.

All in all, Dominic Couzens' book is a marvelous photo-guide to some of our more noteworthy feathered friends. Highly recommended.

Very large book with beautiful pictures. Even more fantastic than I expected. A great book for anyone who is fasinated by the bird world or even those who are not fasinated. Interesting, educational, and entertaining. Love it.

I recognised the bird on the cover as a shoebird from a national geographic article but didnt know that it was the 'most patient feeder'. This book is about the record holders. If it were just that it could have come out on cards with stats. The book is at its best with its explanation for flamingo's long legs, ostriches large eyes, jacana's spread out toes tied to their environment.
The literature goes into more depth about say a humming bird's flight with its digits beyond the fast wing-beat rate. Having seen the shorebirds always on ground, looking at a picture of godwits in flight, it came as a surprise to me that they and plovers migrate so far.
'Biggest communal nest' of sociable weaver had me thinking of beaver's house.

Could any book be better?, no way. I am a Mom to an 8y/o and forever looking for books that use language in its most correct way. This books if full of elegant sentences and with lovely, detailed, descriptions of just about everything that has to do with birds and bird life. For every one, 8 and up!

just a book to look into whenever some time left. In short a nice variety of birds, a picture, some lines of text. Enough for anyone that knows birds to see this is special. This bird is way out of line. Makes you wanna think about those not mentioned, then you see they are almost all there; I found heteronetta atricapella (cucou behaving duck) was missing. But the biggest, heaviest, most colorfull: they are all there with some facts, nice to know.