This classic Poyser title, now in its third revised edition, discusses in depth the various ways in which weather conditions influence bird behaviour. Weather conditions affect food and water availability, decisions about when and how to migrate, timing and success of reproduction, flight style, and physical comfort. Birds display many adaptations in form and behaviour that help them to cope with changing weather conditions, and this fascinating book uses a great variety of examples to explore the subject in depth. The text is enhanced throughout with evocative line drawings, there are many useful tables and figures, and there is also an 8pp colour photograph section.

The way birds behave is one of the vital keys to accurate identification and this book provides the experienced instruction needed to understand and get the most out of watching birds. The guide covers all the fundamental types of bird behaviour, including movement, feeding, breeding, migration, navigation, distribution, range, life and death, all of which are illustrated with beautiful photographs. There is a whole section dedicated to the behaviour of different species groups, from divers and grebes through to sparrows, buntings and finches.

"Effects of Climate Change on Birds provides an exhaustive and up-to-date synthesis of the science of climate change as it relates to birds." -- Back cover.

E. GWINNER! The phenomenon of bird migration with its large scale dimensions has attracted the attention of naturalists for centuries. Worldwide billions of birds leave their breeding grounds every autumn to migrate to areas with seasonally more favor able conditions. Many of these migrants travel only over a few hundred kilo meters but others cover distances equivalent to the circumference of the earth. Among these long-distance migrants are several billion birds that invade Africa every autumn from their West and Central Palaearctic breeding areas. In the Americas and in Asia the scope of bird migration is of a similar magnitude. Just as impressive as the numbers of birds are their achievements. They have to cope with the enormous energetic costs of long-distance flying. particularly while crossing oceans and deserts that do not allow replenishment of depleted fat reserves. They have to appropriately time the onset and end of migrations. both on a daily and annual basis. And finally. they have to orient their migratory movements in space to reach their species- or population-specific wintering and breeding grounds, irrespective of the variable climatic conditions along their migratory routes.

P. Berthold and E. Gwinnd Bird migration is an intriguing aspect of the living world - so much so that it has been investigated for as long, and as thoroughly, as almost any other natural phenomenon. Aristotle, who can count as the founder of scientific ornithology, paid very close attention to the migrations of the birds he ob served, but it was not until the reign of Friedrich II, in the first half of the 13th century, that reliable data began to be obtained. From then on, the data base grew rapidly. Systematic studies of bird migration were introduced when the Vogelwarte Rossitten was founded, as the first ornithological biological observation station in the world (see first chapter "In Memory of Vogelwarte Rossitten"). This area later received enormous impetus when ex perimental research on the subject was begun: the large-scale bird-ringing experiment initiated in Rossitten in 1903 by Johannes Thienemann (who was inspired by the pioneering studies of C. C. M. Mortensen), the experiments on photoperiodicity carried out by William Rowan in the 1920s in Canada and retention and release experiments performed by Thienemann in the 1930s in Rossitten, the first experimental study on the orientation of migratory birds. After the Second World War, migration research, while continuing in the previous areas, also expanded into new directions such as radar ornithology, ecophysiology and hormonal control mechanisms, studies of evolution, ge netics, telemetry and others.

Birds as Monitors of Environmental Change looks at how bird populations are affected by pollutants, water quality, and other physical changes and how this scientific knowledge can help in predicting the effects of pollutants and other physical changes in the environment.