Books > Sport & Leisure > Natural history, country life & pets > Wild animals > Birds & birdwatching
|
Buy Now
Aaaaw to Zzzzzd: The Words of Birds - North America, Britain, and Northern Europe (Hardcover, New)
Loot Price: R421
Discovery Miles 4 210
You Save: R99
(19%)
|
|
Aaaaw to Zzzzzd: The Words of Birds - North America, Britain, and Northern Europe (Hardcover, New)
Series: Aaaaw to Zzzzzd: The Words of Birds
(sign in to rate)
List price R520
Loot Price R421
Discovery Miles 4 210
You Save R99 (19%)
Expected to ship within 9 - 15 working days
|
The distinctive and amazing songs and calls of birds: a meditation
and a lexicon. "A miraculous little book: a compressed encyclopedia
of our fascination with avifauna." -The Nation "A charming, funny,
and eccentric book." -Times Literary Supplement "An elegant tribute
to the beauty of its subject." -Los Angeles Times Birds sing and
call, sometimes in complex and beautiful arrangements of notes,
sometimes in one-line repetitions that resemble a ringtone more
than a symphony. Listening, we are stirred, transported, and even
envious of birds' ability to produce what Shelley called "profuse
strains of unpremeditated art." And for hundreds of years, we have
tried to write down what we hear when birds sing. Poets have put
birdsong in verse (Thomas Nashe: "Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we,
to-witta-woo") and ornithologists have transcribed bird sounds more
methodically. Drawing on this history of bird writing, in Aaaaw to
Zzzzzd John Bevis offers a lexicon of the words of birds. For
tourists in Birdland, there could be no more charming phrasebook.
Consulting it, we find seven distinct variations of "hoo"
attributed to seven different species of owls, from a simple hoo to
the more ambitious hoo hoo hoo-hoo, ho hoo hoo-hoo; the understated
cheet of the tree swallow; the resonant kreeaaaaaaaaaaar of the
Swainson's hawk; the modest peep peep peep of the meadow pipit. We
learn that some people hear the Baltimore oriole saying "here,
here, come right here, dear" and the yellowhammer saying "a little
bit of bread and no cheese." Bevis, a poet, frames his lexicons-one
for North America and one for Britain and northern Europe-with an
evocative appreciation of birds, birdsong, and human attempts to
capture the words of birds in music and poetry. He also offers an
engaging account of other methods of documenting birdsong-field
recording, graphic notation, and mechanical devices including duck
calls and the serinette, an instrument used to teach song tunes to
songbirds. The singing of birds is nature at its most sublime, and
words are our medium for expressing this sublimity. Aaaaw to Zzzzzd
belongs in the bird lover's backpack and on the word lover's
bedside table, an unexpected and sui generis pleasure.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
|
You might also like..
|