From the author of The Curious Gardener's Almanac, a fascinating miscellany that explores the mysterious world of birds. Comprising more than 1,000 entries of remarkable information about birds, bird life, and bird-watching, Bald Coot and Screaming Loon reveals the intriguing evolution and behavior patterns of these avian creatures. Woven into this wealth of knowledge are quotations, anecdotes, traditional sayings, lines of verse, practical advice for attracting and spotting birds, and words of rural wisdom, covering such topics as: ?How birds came to be ?Courtship and breeding ?Why birds sing and call ?Avian anatomy ?Birds and man ?How and why birds fly ?The mystery of migration ?Bird Brains: Instinct or intelligence? ?How birds cope in a damaged world

Strong Spirits, Kind Hearts is the first practical teacher resource to provide comprehensive coverage of all aspects of developing strong spirits and caring young people. It is focused on middle years’ students but most lessons can be adapted for older and younger students as well. This resource describes ways to incorporate emotional and spiritual supports into daily routines and interactions with students and provides ready-to-use activities, lessons and units that can be integrated into subject area teaching. This book helps teachers to: understand the importance of strengthening students’ spirits and how this support improves students’ learning and classroom morale build resilience and hope through their interactions with students distinguish between the development of strong spirits and religious education use approaches that are respectful of religious and spiritual diversity as well as more secular views implement a wealth of strategies, lessons, and units that develop students’ compassion and sense of connection to others and the natural world integrate a focus on meaning and purpose within subject area lessons.

Bald Coot & Screaming Loon contains over 1000 entries of remarkable information about birds, birdlife and birdwatching. Chapters include: The Last of the Dinosaurs: How birds evolved and adapted; The Cloaca Monologues: Courtship & Breeding; A Cracking Start: Raising a family; Sing A Song of Sixpence: Why birds sing and call; Why don't birds wee? Birds and their bodies; A Complex Relationship: Birds & man; The Majesty of Flight: How and why birds fly; Pole to pole without a map: The mystery of migration; Bird Brain: Instinct or intelligence?; Weird Birds & Strange Behaviour: A curate's egg of a chapter; and The Battle for Survival: How birds are faring in a damaged world Woven into this wealth of knowledge are famous quotations, anecdotes, traditional sayings, lines of verse, practical advice for attracting and spotting birds, and words of rural wisdom. The spirit and focus of the Almanac is British but the book also travels as far and distant as the world's birds themselves. It is truly an essential handbook for every bird lover.

Early in 2013 Neil Hayward was at a crossroads. He didn't want to open a bakery or whatever else executives do when they quit a lucrative but unfulfilling job. He didn't want to think about his failed relationship with “the one” or his potential for ruining a new relationship with “the next one.” And he almost certainly didn't want to think about turning forty. And so instead he went birding. Birding was a lifelong passion. It was only among the birds that Neil found a calm that had eluded him in the confusing world of humans. But this time he also found competition. His growing list of species reluctantly catapulted him into a Big Year--a race to find the most birds in one year. His peregrinations across twenty-eight states and six provinces in search of exotic species took him to a hoarfrost-covered forest in Massachusetts to find a Fieldfare; to Lake Havasu, Arizona, to see a rare Nutting's Flycatcher; and to Vancouver for the Red-flanked Bluetail. Neil's Big Year was as unplanned as it was accidental: It was the perfect distraction to life. Neil shocked the birding world by finding 749 species of bird and breaking the long-standing Big Year record. He also surprised himself: During his time among the hummingbirds, tanagers, and boobies, he found a renewed sense of confidence and hope about the world and his place in it.

"The most comprehensive single-volume reference of its kind, The Facts On File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, Fourth Edition has been completely updated and expanded and now contains definitions and origins of more than 15,000 words and expressions. This encyclopedia features anecdotes and information on the development of a wide range of words, including slang, proverbs, animal and plant names, place names, nicknames, historical expressions, foreign language expressions, and phrases from literature. The emphasis throughout is on words and expressions whose origins are not adequately explained, or not addressed at all, in standard dictionaries. Approximately 2,500 new entries have been added to this edition, ranging from Aardsma to zounds."--BOOK JACKET.

The delightful story told by British teen Georgia Nicholson through her journals--a Michael L.