Issue #0

The shorebirds of North America.

Plot

The restlessness of shorebirds, their kinship with the distance and swift seasons, the wistful signal of their voices down the long coastlines of the world make them, for me, the most affecting of wild creatures. The Wind Birds is an extensively revised version of a text originally published in 1967 as part of an illustrated book in larger format called The Shorebirds of North America. At that time, Peter Matthiessen's monograph won wide acclaim; Roger Tory Peterson described him as a "superb writer" and John Hay, writing in Natural History magazine, said, "Peter Matthiessen's text has the deftness and balance of a fine writer, it is a mosaic of fascinating information, of observation and description expertly placed."Twenty-five beautiful new drawings by Robert Gillmor, one of the finest wildlife artists in the world, accompany the text, which has been updated and expanded with much new information on the year-round activities of the wind birds, including their incredible transoceanic migrations and their bizarre mating and nesting habits, from the Gulf Coast to the Arctic tundra. Although precise and authoritative in its scientific information, this is a delightful, vital, and exciting account of the habits and history of the most varied and remarkable families of birds on earth, one that will interest every lover of nature.