Excerpt from Pioneers in Tropical America The publishers of this book asked me to write a series of works which should deal with "real adventures", in parts of the world either wild and uncontrolled by any civilized government, or at any rate regions full of dangers, of wonderful discoveries; in which the daring and heroism of white men (and sometimes of white women) stood out clearly against backgrounds of unfamiliar landscapes, peopled with strange nations, savage tribes, dangerous beast, or wonderful birds. These books would again and again illustrate the first coming of the white race into regions inhabited by people of a different type, with brown, black, or yellow skins; how the European was received, and how he treated these races of the soil which gradually came under his rule owing to his superior knowledge, weapons, wealth, or powers of persuasion. The books were to tell the plain truth, even if here and there they showed the white man to have behaved badly, or if they revealed the fact that the American Indian, the Negro, the Malay, the black Australian was sometimes cruel and treacherous. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The guide to neotropical bird behavior that picks up where field guides leave off. Why are tropical birds like parrots and quetzals so much more colorful than those in more temperate climates? How can a vulture soaring thousands of feet above the canopy spot a dead rodent no bigger than a mouse on the rainforest floor? What permits sparrow-sized antbirds to not only survive but to thrive among relentless hordes of army ants that devour every other living thing in their path? Steven Hilty has led birding tours to the American Tropics for decades. By providing answers to the hundreds of questions asked by participants of these expeditions, Hilty has produced a natural history of the bird life of the New World Tropics that is at once practical, accurate, and as endlessly fascinating as the species whose lives it reveals. Birds of Tropical America was published by Chapters Publishing in 1994 and went out of print in 1997. UT Press is pleased to reissue it with a new epilogue and updated references.