Hft, 241 sid, 24x16 cm.
2011
Fullständig titel: In the Field, Among the Feathered: A history of Birders and Their Guides.
Bok om utvecklingen av fältahandböcker för fåglar i Nordamerika. Illustrerad i både färg och svartvitt.
America is a nation of ardent birdwatchers. But how did it become so? And what role
did the field guide play in our passion for spotting, watching, and describing birds?
In the Field, Among the Featheredtells the history of field guides to birds in America from the Victorian era to the present, relating changes in the guides to shifts in science, the craft of field identification, and new technologies for the mass reproduction of images. Drawing on his experience asa passionate birder and on a wealth of archival research, Thomas Dunlap shows how the twin pursuitsof recreation and conservation have inspired birders and how field guides have served as the preferred method of informal education about nature for well over a century.
The book begins with the first generation of late 19th-century birdwatchers who built the hobby whenopera glasses were often the best available optics and bird identification was sketchy at best. AsAmerica became increasingly urban, birding became more attractive, and with Roger Tory Peterson's first field guide in 1934, birding grew in both popularity and accuracy. By the 1960s recreational birders were attaining new levels of expertise, even as the environmental movement made birding's otherpole, conservation, a matter of human health and planetary survival. Dunlap concludes by showing how recreation and conservation have reached a new balance in the last 40 years, as scientists have increasingly turned to amateurs, whose expertise had been honed by the new guides, to gather the datathey need to support habitat preservation.
Putting nature lovers and citizen-activists at the heart of his work, Thomas Dunlap offers an entertaining history of America's long-standing love affair with birds, and with the books that have guided and informed their enthusiasm.
Features:
First book to examine the development of this book genre, relating changes in the guides to shiftsin science, the craft knowledge of field identification, and the developing technologies of birding photography. As a birder himself, author brings passion for the subject, inner knowledge ofhow birders think, and familiarity with guides. Examines the intersection of recreation, social class, and birding.