Birds in Winter - Surviving the Most Challenging Season

Roger F. Pasquier

Summary

How birds have evolved and adapted to survive winterBirds in Winter is the first book devoted to the ecology and behavior of birds during this most challenging season. Birds remaining in regions with cold weather must cope with much shorter days to find food and shelter even as they need to avoid predators and stay warm through the long nights, while migrants to the tropics must fit into very different ecosystems and communities of resident birds. Roger Pasquier explores how winter affects birds’ lives all through the year, starting in late summer, when some begin caching food to retrieve months later and others form social groups lasting into the next spring. During winter some birds are already pairing up for the following breeding season, so health through the winter contributes to nesting success.Today, rapidly advancing technologies are enabling scientists to track individual birds through their daily and annual movements at home and across oceans and hemispheres, revealing new and unexpected information about their lives and interactions. But, as Birds in Winter shows, much is visible to any interested observer. Pasquier describes the season’s distinct conservation challenges for birds that winter where they have bred and for migrants to distant regions. Finally, global warming is altering the nature of winter itself. Whether birds that have evolved over millennia to survive this season can now adjust to a rapidly changing climate is a problem all people who enjoy watching them must consider.Filled with elegant line drawings by artist and illustrator Margaret La Farge, Birds in Winter describes how winter influences the lives of birds from the poles to the equator.

Available since: 08/13/2019.

Science & Technology

Other books that might interest you

The Better Half - On the Genetic...

PhD Dr. Sharon Moalem MD

An award-winning physician and scientist makes the game-changing case that genetic females are stronger than males at every stage of life.
This program is read by the author
Here are some facts: Women live longer than men. They have stronger immune systems. They're better at fighting cancer and surviving famine, and even see the world in a wider variety of colors. They are simply stronger than men at every stage of life. Why is this? And why are we taught the opposite?
To find out, Dr. Sharon Moalem drew on his own medical experiences--treating premature babies in the neonatal intensive care unit; recruiting the elderly for neurogenetic studies; tending to HIV-positive orphans in Thailand--and tried to understand why in every instance men were consistently less likely to thrive. The answer, he discovered, lies in our genetics: two X chromosomes offer a powerful survival advantage.
With clear, captivating prose that weaves together eye-opening research, case studies, diverse examples ranging from the behavior of honeybees to American pioneers, as well as experiences from his personal life and his own patients, Moalem explains why genetic females triumph over males when it comes to resiliency, intellect, stamina, immunity and much more. He also calls for a reconsideration of our male-centric, one-size-fits-all view of medical studies and even how we prescribe medications--a view that still sees women through the lens of men.
Revolutionary and yet utterly convincing, The Better Half will make you see humanity and the survival of our species anew.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Show book

Wordpress Websites for Business...

Michael Cordova

A website development pioneer gives business owners—from tech savvy to beginner—the tools, knowledge, and tactics to succeed in today’s online economy.

If your company is building a new website, you’re certainly thinking about content and design. But don’t forget performance, especially if you need your website to generate business leads and sales. Wordpress Websites for Business guides you through the process of building a website that will sustain and grow your company. Using the techniques detailed in this book I am currently bringing in more than one million dollars’ worth of leads a month for one of my clients.

I have used most of the top content management systems and built many custom CMS systems myself. From my experience, I can say that Wordpress is the most effective tool available to build your company’s website and bring in leads and sales for your business. However, if used incorrectly, it can actually hurt your company. I’ve seen it happen, and the effects can be devastating. The good news is that there’s a better way. In an easy-to-follow, step-by-step program, this book will tell you what you need to do to avoid the pitfalls while ensuring maximum exposure, search engine rankings, and conversions (sales)!

This powerful book features: game changing checklists and resources; simple settings that only take a few minutes, but can make a huge difference in website performance; the best Wordpress plugins and services to optimize your site and maximize leads; the best Wordpress themes that enable you to build an up-to-date website that performs for you; content creation hacks such as how to map your business goals directly to your content; Wordpress best practices simplified, such as why and how to create a child theme; the tools and techniques that drop your page load times to less than two seconds; and much more . . .

The strategies and tactics I present in Wordpress Websites for Business will result in more leads and sales for your company, and that’s what it’s all about.

Show book

On Flexibility - Recovery from...

Meir Finkel

“An outstanding work. Inculcating adaptability, flexibility, and responsiveness to surprise is the chief preoccupation of the major armies of the world.” —David Betz, Department of War Studies, King’s College London   This book addresses one of the basic questions in military studies: How can armies cope effectively with technological and doctrinal surprises—ones that leave them vulnerable to new weapons systems and/or combat doctrines?    Author Meir Finkel contends that the current paradigm—with its over-dependence on intelligence and an all-out effort to predict the nature of the future battlefield and the enemy’s capabilities—generally doesn’t work.    Based on historical case analysis of successful “under-fire” recovery and failure to recover, he identifies the variables that have determined these outcomes, and he presents an innovative method for military force planning that will enables armies to deal with the uncertainties of future wars “in real time.”   His proposed method combines conceptual, doctrinal, cognitive, command, organizational, and technological elements to produce optimal battlefield flexibility and adaptability. He then demonstrates that, when properly applied, this method can eliminate most obstacles to overcoming battlefield surprises.  “[A] thoroughly researched and objective work of events impacting America’s military affairs and security policies.” —Parameters  “Originally published in Israel in 2007, this thoughtful work by Col. Finkel (IDF) looks at how modern military forces have coped with surprise in terms of innovative technologies, techniques, or tactics.” —A. A. Nofi, StrategyPage.com  “This book combines solid history and an innovative analytical structure. It begins to fill in a serious hole in our understanding of flexibility or what could better be called ‘adaptation under fire.’ It is strongly recommended for senior military leaders and students of military innovation and force planning.” —Frank Hoffman, Journal of Military History

Show book

Imperial Mud - The Fight for the...

James Boyce

**WINNER OF THE HISTORY AND TRADITION CATEGORY, EAST ANGLIAN BOOK AWARDS 2020**

**LONGLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE 2021**
'A real page-turner ... a warning about what happens when the rich and powerful dress up their avarice as "progress" - a lesson we could do with learning today.' Dixe Wills, BBC Countryfile magazine

FROM A MULTI-AWARD-WINNING HISTORIAN, AN ARRESTING NEW HISTORY OF THE BATTLE FOR THE FENS.

Between the English Civil Wars and the mid-Victorian period, the proud indigenous population of the Fens of eastern England fought to preserve their homeland against an expanding empire. After centuries of resistance, their culture and community were destroyed, along with their wetland home - England's last lowland wilderness. But this was no simple triumph of technology over nature - it was the consequence of a newly centralised and militarised state, which enriched the few while impoverishing the many.

In this colourful and evocative history, James Boyce brings to life not only colonial masters such as Oliver Cromwell and the Dukes of Bedford but also the defiant 'Fennish' them- selves and their dangerous and often bloody resistance to the enclosing landowners. We learn of the eels so plentiful they became a kind of medieval currency; the games of 'Fen football' that were often a cover for sabotage of the drainage works; and the destruction of a bountiful ecosystem that had sustained the Fennish for thousands of years and which meant that they did not have to submit in order to survive.

Masterfully argued and imbued with a keen sense of place, Imperial Mud reimagines not just the history of the Fens, but the history and identity of the English people.

Show book

Interpretation of Dreams The -...

Sigmund Freud

The Interpretation of Dreams is an 1899 book by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in which the author introduces his theory of the unconscious with respect to dream interpretation, and discusses what would later become the theory of the Oedipus complex. Freud revised the book at least eight times and, in the third edition, added an extensive section which treated dream symbolism very literally, following the influence of Wilhelm Stekel. Freud said of this work, "Insight such as this falls to one's lot but once in a lifetime." 
Dated 1900, the book was first published in an edition of 600 copies, which did not sell out for eight years. The Interpretation of Dreams later gained in popularity, and seven more editions were published in Freud's lifetime. 
Because of the book's length and complexity, Freud also wrote an abridged version called On Dreams. The original text is widely regarded as one of Freud's most significant works.

Show book

Healing Your Back Of Chronic Pain

Christopher Maloney

Got Back Pain? Have you tried stretches, rest, and pain medication without success? Thinking about surgery?The pain relief you seek might be closer than you think. In this short, researched book, Dr. Maloney explains how habitual pain responses can be caused by both physical and emotional triggers. Move beyond stretching exercises and mental self-therapy to combine the best of both with new research on the programming of our muscles. Read Dr. Maloney’s review of the existing options and save yourself time, money and grief when you find your own path to healing. When he was twelve years old, Christopher Maloney found out he had a “bad back.” But decades later Dr. Christopher Maloney, N.D., doesn’t live in chronic pain. He has worked for years to discover solutions beyond the conventional. In the process, Dr. Maloney discovered a map of back pain. He has used that map to help hundreds of people with back pain and now shares the map with the world. Before he became a doctor, Dr. Maloney gave massages to friends and family members. In clinic, he became a sought-after last resort for unrelieved back and neck pain. As Dr. Maloney went into practice, he found that bodywork done over time with patient participation resulted in far better outcomes. In the process, patients released habitual responses that had troubled them for years. Healing Your Back of Chronic Pain contains the research behind Dr. Maloney’s treatment of the back. It discusses the shortcomings of existing treatments and suggests combining treatments for better results. Dr. Maloney gives an overview of his map of the back, along with patient examples that worked. Then he gives advice on how to map your own back. Ever a realist, Dr. Maloney ends his book with ten things patients should try before resorting to surgery. Short, researched, and direct, Healing Your Back of Chronic Pain combines classic common sense with cutting-edge research. By the time patients finish Healing Your Back of Chronic Pain, they should know why their current treatments haven’t worked long-term, how to combine treatments, and at come away with at least one new idea for relieving their back pain.

Show book