Birds at their Best - Birds and Man - Daws in the West Country - Early Spring in Savernake Forest - A Wood Wren at Wells - Secret of the Charm of Flowers - Ravens in Somerset - Owls in a Village - The Strange and Beautiful Sheldrake - Geese: An Appeciation and a Memory - The Dartford Warbler - Vert-Vert Or Perrot Gossip - Something Pretty in a Glass Case - Selborne

“A thoughtful examination of the machinery of extinction . . . By turns harrowing and elegiac, thrilling and informative.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Three or four times an hour, eighty or more times a day, a unique species of plant or animal vanishes forever. And yet, every so often one of these lost species resurfaces. “Having adventures most of us can only dream about” (The Times-Picayune), Scott Weidensaul pursues stories of loss and recovery, of endurance against the odds, and of surprising resurrections.

This book is a compilation of bird stories written by our mother, Martha Ramseur Gillham. They were first published in the Arkansas Wildlife Federation newspaper Arkansas Out-of-Doors from 1972 until 1985. She was a longtime member of the federation which was instrumental in passing Amendment 35 to the Arkansas constitution which established the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission as an independent body. All the illustrations were drawn by another member and close friend, Joe Gray, a commercial and wildlife artist, and political cartoonist in Dardanelle Arkansas. The book has been assembled and published at the insistence and funding of our father Ralph Gillham. All proceeds from sales will go to the Yell County Wildlife Federation. Lucien and Richard Gillham, Joanna Gray Lange and Bob Gray

It was the pathetic mews of a hungry mother cat, scrounging in a dumpster to feed her kittens that first caught Bob and Kathy Rude's attention. They found the hungry cat and several more hungry felines while helping out at the family restaurant one summer. The chance meeting between the hungry strays and two government computer programmers led to the creation of Rude Ranch Animal Rescue, one of the United States' hardest working No-Kill Animal Sanctuaries. Read on to meet these original Rude Cats and find what can go right and wrong when you try to help a few stray animals and inadvertently start an animal sanctuary.

Tom Michell is in his roaring twenties: single, free-spirited and seeking adventure. He has a plane ticket to South America, a teaching position in a prestigious Argentine boarding school, and endless summer holidays.

What he doesn't need is a pet. What he really doesn't need is a pet penguin.

But while on holiday in Uruguay he spots a penguin struggling in an oil slick and knows he has to help. And then the penguin refuses to leave his side . . .

Clearly Tom has no choice but to smuggle it across the border, through customs, and back to school. He names him Juan Salvador.

Whether it's as the rugby team's mascot, the housekeeper's confidant, the host at Tom's parties or the most flamboyant swimming coach in world history, Juan Salvador transforms the lives of all he meets - including Tom, who discovers a compadre like no other . . .

THE COCKER; Containing Every Information to the Breeders and Amateurs Of that Noble Bird, THE GAME COCK. By W. Sketchley. Originally published in 1814, this rare early work on the Game Cock is both expensive and hard to find in its first edition. READ COUNTRY BOOKS have republished it, using the original text and engravings. The author was born and bred in Staffordshire, a part of the country high in repute for its love of the Game Cock and Cocking. This important historical work contains a wealth of knowledge and experience gained over a period of fifty years as a top breeder of fighting cocks. The book's one hundred and fifty four pages are divided into two sections. The first contains detailed chapters on: Breeding. - Trials. - Remarks on the Change in Constitution. - Remarks on Steady Breeding. - The Necessity of Making Trials. - Bad Constitution in Cocks. - Some Favourite Breeds of Cocks. - Cockfeeders. - Cock Match Articles and Rules. - More Remarks on Breeding. - Matching etc. The second section consists of specially designed pages for keeping records: Pedigrees of Brood Cocks, Hens, or Pullets. - Names and Characters of Cocks. - Accounts of Cocks. - Bags in stock. - Memorandums. - Accounts. Having reproduced this book from an original first edition, the publishers decided to retain a small number of interesting hand written notes in the records section. These were made in 1825 by the original owner. This is a fascinating read for any Game Fowl enthusiast or historian, and also contains much information that is still useful and practical today. Many of the earliest poultry books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasinglyexpensive. Read Country Books are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Rivers under Siege is a wrenching firsthand account of how human interventions, often well intentioned, have wreaked havoc on West Tennessee's fragile wetlands. For more than a century, farmers and developers tried to tame the rivers as they became clogged with sand and debris, thereby increasing flooding. Building levees and changing the course of the rivers from meandering streams to straight-line channels, developers only made matters worse. Yet the response to failure was always to try to subdue nature, to dig even bigger channels and construct even more levees-an effort that reached its sorry culmination in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' massive West Tennessee Tributaries Project during the 1960s. As a result, the rivers' natural hydrology descended into chaos, devastating the plant and animal ecology of the region's wetlands. Crops and trees died from summer flooding, as much of the land turned into useless, stagnant swamps. The author was one of a small group of state waterfowl managers who saw it all happen, most sadly within the Obion-Forked Deer river system and at Reelfoot Lake. After much trial and error, Johnson and his colleagues in the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency began by the 1980s to abandon their old methods, resorting to management procedures more in line with the natural contours of the floodplains and the natural behavior of rivers. Preaching their new stewardship philosophy to anyone who might listen-their supervisors, duck hunters, conservationists, politicians, federal agencies-they were often ignored. The campaign dragged on for twenty years before an innovative and rational plan came from the Governor's Office and gained wide support. But then, too, that plan fell prey to politics, legal wrangling, self-interest, hardheadedness, and tradition. Yet, despite such heartbreaking setbacks, the author points to hopeful signs that West Tennessee's historic wetlands might yet be recovered for the benefit of all who use them and recognize their vital importance. Jim W. Johnson, now retired, was for many years a lands management biologist with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency. He was responsible for the overall supervision and coordination of thirteen wildlife management areas and refuges, primarily for waterfowl, in northwest Tennessee.