This useful and attractive guide includes 140 color photos and more than 600 maps detailing where each species can be found in Texas.

“. . . includes some stunning images of Mexican and less-well-known Texas species . . . the authors have provided a unique and elegant publication that is truly an important contribution to Texas ornithology.” --Great Plains Research “Everyone interested in Texas birds must have the Handbook of Texas Birds, a marvelous book. It is full of up-to-date information about Texas birds that cannot be found in one place anywhere else. [The annotations] are full of good information that anyone interested in birds will sooner or later refer to when trying to better understand their own yard’s birds or species seen in various other locations throughout the state.”--Victoria Advocate “The useful and attractive guide includes 140 color photos and more than 600 maps detailing where each species can be found in Texas.”--Abilene Reporter-News “. . . an attractive handbook that birders, both serious and casual, will find valuable when visiting this state with its very diverse avifauna. . . Given the increasing popularity of birding as a pastime for young and old, this book should be in the natural history of most public libraries and colleges.”--Choice

Undertaking a Big Year requires a more extreme version of planning than what is needed to bird in a typical year. In a Big Year a birder is trying to see or hear new birds every day, day after day, throughout the whole year. The first woman to complete a North American Big Year (continental United States and Canada) and identify over 700 species, Lynn E. Barber clocked more than 175,000 miles and ticked off a then record setting 723 species over twelve months in 2008. Yet even as an anomaly—a female birder in the then male-dominated world of competitive birding—she took the initiative to reimagine the whole idea of a Big Year in the two biggest states in the country. At home in both Texas and Alaska, Barber offers an inside look into how to plan, execute, and thoroughly enjoy a year of finding the birds that inhabit two of the nation’s most diverse landscapes. The drastic differences between the climate, geography, plant life, and habitat at the far northern and southern edges of the US mainland mean seeing a distinct number of birds in each state that are not found in the other. Yet as states with both coastal and international boundaries, Texas and Alaska provide countless opportunities to see the most seasonally varied, far flying, and specifically adapted birds in the world. As Barber chronicles her travels throughout the Texan and Alaskan landscapes, serious and casual birders alike will appreciate her lively and informative prose and commitment to her distinct approach to the Big Year challenge.

Chimney Swifts, birds that nest and roost in chimneys, have been historically abundant in North America. But by the late 1980s, the number of swifts migrating to North America from the Amazon River Basin had declined. A growing number of people across North America are now constructing nesting towers and conducting Chimney Swift conservation projects in their own communities. With Chimney Swift Towers, concerned bird conservationists have a step-by-step guide to help them create more habitat for these beneficial, insect-eating birds. Chimney Swift experts Paul and Georgean Kyle give directions for building freestanding wooden towers, wooden kiosk towers, masonry towers, and other structures. Included are - design basics, - lists of materials needed, - useful diagrams and photographs, - and detailed instructions on site preparation, tower construction, installation, and maintenance. Anyone with basic woodworking or masonry skills and an interest in wildlife conservation will find this publication helpful. That includes do-it-yourselfers, homeowners involved in creating backyard habitat for wildlife, landscape and structural architects, park and wildscape managers, wildlife management area professionals, nature centers, garden centers, scout troops, and other civic organizations in search of community service projects.

Virtually every San Antonio citizen over a certain age with any interest in literature will have vivid memories of Rosengren's Books. It was the absolute center of literary culture not only in San Antonio, but in Texas, for decades. Indeed, from the 1930s to the 1980s, Rosengren's Books was considered one of the finest bookstores between New York and San Francisco. It was a mid-continent haven for writers as diverse as Frost, John Dos Pasos, J. Frank Dobie, and Larry McMurtry. Rosengren's Books: An Oasis for Mind and Spirit is the story of a great American family of independent booksellers and the important literary institution they created. Beginning as a rare book store in Chicago, Frank and Florence Rosengren brought the store to San Antonio, Texas, in 1935. Located in various downtown locations, it became most well known as the charming book shop behind the Alamo, where it was visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists from around the world. At the heart of the story is Florence Rosengren, whom former San Antonio mayor Phil Hardberger calls the "Sylvia Beach of South Texas" and Texas Observer founding editor Ronnie Dugger described as "the chief guardian of civilization from here to Mexico City."

Drawing on the knowledge and insight gained from a lifetime of watching, studying, and enjoying birds, this book is full of information about more than four hundred species of birds in Texas, most all of which author Gary Clark has seen first hand. Organized in the standard taxonomic order familiar to most birders, the book is written in a conversational tone that yields a wide-ranging discussion of each bird’s life history as well as an intimate look at some of its special characteristics and habits. Information regarding each species’ diet, voice, and nest is included as well as when and where it can be found in Texas. Magnificent photographs by Kathy Adams Clark accompany each bird’s entry. For those just beginning to watch birds to those who can fully relate to the experiences and sentiments communicated here by a veteran birder, this book reveals the kind of personal connection to nature that careful attention to the birds around us can inspire.

This book explores the life of Henry Dresser (1838–1915), one of the most productive British ornithologists of the mid-late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and is largely based on previously unpublished archival material. Dresser travelled widely and spent time in Texas during the American Civil War. He built enormous collections of skins and eggs of birds from Europe, North America and Asia, which formed the basis of over 100 publications, including some of the finest bird books of the late nineteenth century. Dresser was a leading figure in scientific society and in the early bird conservation movement; his correspondence and diaries reveal the inner workings, motivations, personal relationships and rivalries that existed among the leading ornithologists.