A comprehensive illustrated guide to the Old World family of birds in the Helm Identification series. Starlings range from familiar species such as Common Starling and Common Myna, which are closely associated with people and have been introduced to many parts of the world, to little-known forest birds with a very restricted distribution. The family is centred on tropical Asia and tropical Africa, where two separate evolutionary radiations have occurred. This is the first monograph on the starling family, and summarises the current knowledge of all speices, with a comprehensive bibliography. Information from the avicultural literature is included since for some species nesting and other behaviour have never been observed in the field. Many starlings are highly social, some even nest in colonies, and cooperative breeding ('helpers at the nest') occurs in a number of African species highlights areas where information is lacking, particularly for those starlings whose existence is threatened by habitat destruction.

In the aftermath of a major earthquake, eleven-year-old Maya overcomes her own fear to help others at home and in northeast Japan, where a tsunami caused great damage. Includes author's note about the facts behind the story.

Occasionally, a reader will happen upon a book that is excellent as a bedtime sleeping aidbut not this one. With nearly five score different events, happenings, and adventures with dozens of related and pertinent rabbit trails lending credence to the excursions, the reader will be thumb ready to eagerly flip a page, seeking the outcome of the last daring deed of the adventuresome author. Wide is the variety of decent and noble escapades at a time when seat belts were unknown, standing up in the center aisle of the school bus for six miles was permitted, and unwritten laws of the land promoted unlimited homemade adventures and the unshackled variety of down-to-earth fun. Youthful minds, unabashedly, often ran rampant in the myriad of rare adventures that were available to pursue. We attempted many and lived to tell about our assorted and varied shenanigansmost of them with a grin!

Based on the approach laid out in the 1950s by Nobel laureate Nikolaas Tinbergen, this book looks at animal communication from the four perspectives of mechanisms, ontogeny, function, and phylogeny.