Issue #0

Life Histories of North American Woodpeckers

Plot

Indiana is proud to publish this lavish book, the first properly designed and professionally illustrated edition of any of Arthur Cleveland Bent's Life Histories of North American Birds. For the first time in this century, one of Bent's books is now available in an appropriate format, handsome library bindings, a modern attractive typeface, and with magnificent original paintings. Eventually, Zimmerman and the Press expect to republish the entire series in this new format.Everyone who develops a serious interest in birds soon discovers Bent's Life Histories. He began work on the project in 1910 at the request of the Smithsonian Institution and continued gathering and publishing material until his death in 1954. The Histories provide the most comprehensive and interesting collection of field observations of North American birds ever made. Anyone observing a particular bird for the first time, at the backyard bird feeder or in the field, quickly wants more information than the standard field guides provide. Bent never disappoints. His books are a naturalist's delight. No ornithologist or nature lover of any stripe, professional or amateur, should be without these books.All of the woodpeckers seen in North America are covered in this volume. In enthusiastic, readable prose, Bent and his collaborators give us information about courtship, nesting habits, eggs, young, plumage, range, behavior, voice, enemies, distribution, migratory habits, and much, much more.Added to this handsome republication are the original paintings of one of America's finest bird painters. Zimmerman says:"In rereading Bent's Life Histories of North American Woodpeckers in preparation for illustrating this book, I became newly inspired by the vivid descriptions of how the Harris's Woodpecker takes cover during downpours in the rain forest of western Washington; the White-headed Woodpecker in California's pine-forested highlands coming down to drink from a mountain stream; the male and female Williamson's Sapsucker, so different they were originally believed to be two separate species; the Nuttall's Woodpecker with its habit of landing nuthatch-style on the underside of tree limbs; the flycatching behavior of the Lewis's; and much more. I have tried to present this kind of detail in the plates."