Of a feather

A brief history of American birding

Plot

Arriving in the New World, Europeans were awestruck by a continent awash with birds. Today tens of millions of Americans birders have made a once eccentric hobby into something so mainstream it's (almost) cool. Scott Weidensaul traces the colorful evolution of American birding: from the frontier ornithologists who collected eggs between border skirmishes to the society matrons who organized the first effective conservation movement; from the luminaries with checkered pasts, such as convicted blackmailer Alexander Wilson and the endlessly self-mythologizing John James Audubon, to the awkward schoolteacher Roger Tory Peterson, whose A Field Guide to the Birds prompted the explosive growth of modern birding.Spirited and compulsively readable, Of a Feather celebrates the passions and achievements of birders throughout Americcan history. AUTHOR: SCOTT WEIDENSAUL is the author of four previous works of natural history--Return to Wild America, The Ghost with Trembling Wings, Pulitzer Prize finalist Living on the Wind, and Mountains of the Heart. He is a federally licensed bird bander and lives in the Pennsylvania Appalachians.