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Bezig met laden... Hope Is the Thing With Feathers: A Personal Chronicle of Vanished Birds (origineel 2000; editie 2009)door Christopher Cokinos
Informatie over het werkHope Is the Thing with Feathers: A Personal Chronicle of Vanished Birds door Christopher Cokinos (2000)
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"There was a time when massive flocks of Passenger Pigeons blotted out the sun, and bright green Carolina Parakeets were so numerous that they looked, according to an early American pioneer, "like an atmosphere of gems." But these birds - as well as the Labrador Duck, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, the Heath Hen, and the Great Auk - now live only as tantalizing but hazy legends."
"Driven by a desire to understand how and why this came to be, Christopher Cokinos embarked on ten years of detective work. Traveling from Bird Rock in the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Louisiana's tangled bayous in search of those who stalked these birds and those who tried to save them, he discovered strange stories and glorious quests, tales of scientific heroism and political stupidity, of inconceivable apathy and equally astonishing personal devotion."
"Much more than an account of the last days of six vanished species, Hope Is the Thing with Feathers is a window into American history. Cokinos portrays a country economically reliant on unbelievable quantities of wild birds, where market stalls overflowed with Heath Hens, fashionable women adorned their hats with entire dead birds, and nearly everyone relished a hearty pie made from Passenger Pigeons. He describes a 1935 expedition to record as many bird songs as possible across much of the United States - an unprecedented 15,000-mile journey of enormous difficulty into this country's unspoiled wilderness - and investigates a mysterious April 1999 sighting of Ivory-billed Wodpeckers, long held to be extinct.
He unravels the bizarre account of the world's last wild Passenger Pigeon, and delves into an incredible plan now afoot on Martha's Vineyard to create new Heath Hens."--Jacket. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)598.168Natural sciences and mathematics Zoology Birds Specific topics [Reptiles now at 597.9] Categories of birds [Sauropterygia now at 567.93] Endangered and rareLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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I find it terribly sad that no one knows the exact date of the demise of the Carolina Parakeet, but then again that's probably true of many extinct species. Right? How do we really know when we have seen the very last whatever? Here are details from Hope is the Thing with Feathers that will stick with me for a very long time: the Heath Hen has been compared to the Greater Prairie Chicken for their myriad of similarities. Their mating sounds are practical identical. Is that why no one took the extinction of the Heath Hen seriously? Were they so abundant they fell victim to overhunting; were they that easy to massacre? Is that what happened to the Passenger Pigeon? The cruelty inflicted on these birds was difficult to read. Cokinos gets into the question of cloning. Can you clone a species which has gone completely extinct? Can we have a Jurassic Park moment on a less dangerous scale?
Besides hunting, another factor wreaking havoc on bird populations was deforestation. Singer Sewing Machine purchased the nesting grounds of Lord God birds. Then they sold the rights to logging companies who cleared the land, destroying everything in its path. This happened over and over again. ( )