BIRDING ADVENTURE BOOKS

Sean Dooley. The Big Twitch: One man, one continent, and a race against time: A true story about birdwatching. Allen & Unwin 2005. Details (pdf). 336 pages. Australian comedian Dooley spent 2002 trying to see 700 species of birds in Australia in a year, reporting regularly on Birding-Aus. US | UK | DE | FR | CA

Melbourne Armstrong Carriker, Jr. Experiences of an Ornithologist Along the Highways and Byways of Bolivia: Collecting Birds in an Isolated, Magnificent Land in the Nineteen Thirties. Edited by Melbourne Romaine Carriker (the famous collector's son) and Robert C. Dalgleish. 480 pages. Authorhouse 2006. US | UK | DE | FR | CA

Melbourne Romaine Carriker. Vista Nieve: The Remarkable True Adventures of an Early Twentieth Century Naturalist and His Family in Colombia, South America. 312 pages. Blue Mantle Press 2000. US | UK | DE | FR | CA

Stephen Moss. A Bird in the Bush: A Social History of Birdwatching. Aurum Press.

Stephen Moss. A Bird in the Bush: A Social History of Birdwatching. This is the best book about birding since Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book. It traces the history of British birding and the development of birding norms and terminology, and reports on some of the overseas trips that launched intensive world twitching. 375 pages. Aurum Press 2004. US | UK | DE | FR | CA

Phoebe Snetsinger. Birding on Borrowed Time. Illustrated by H. Douglas Pratt. American Birding Association. June 2003. US | UK

Peter Mathiessen. The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes. Illustrated by Robert Bateman. WorldTwitch 2001 Best Birding Adventure Book Award. Peter Mathiessen is not only an acclaimed author but a skillful and knowledgeable birder. 349 pages. North Point Press & Harvill Press 2001. US | UK | DE | FR | CA
Paperback reprint: US | UK | DE | FR | CA

The Ghost with Trembling Wings, by Scott Weidensaul

Scott Weidensaul. The Ghost with Trembling Wings: Science, wishful thinking, and the search for lost species. I'm looking forward to reading this book, which includes a chapter on the author's unsuccessful search for Cone-billed Tanager in central Mato Grosso, Brazil. North Point Press, June 2002. 352 pages. US | UK | DE | FR | CA

Paperback reprint: US | UK | DE | FR | CA

Don Stap. A Parrot Without a Name: The search for the last unknown birds on earth. How to see the "parrot without a name." University of Texas Press. 1991 (1990). 239 pages. US | UK

Somewhere South of Miami, by Craig Faanes

Craig Faanes. Somewhere South of Miami. About Craig's birding trips to the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico. 411 pages. PublishAmerica 2002. US | UK

Fred and Marie Webster. The Road to El Cielo: Mexico's Forest in the Clouds. Illustrated by Nancy McGowan. 265 pages. University of Texas Press 2002. US | UK

Bruce Beehler. A Naturalist in New Guinea. 251 pages. University of Texas Press, 1991. US | UK

George K. Cherrie. Dark Trails: Adventures of a naturalist. Putnam 1930. The autobiography of a great field ornithologist. Includes his accounts of the "River of Doubt" expedition and the AMNH Colombia expedition. (Look for a copy with dust jacket, as the back cover of the dj is filled with a handwritten tribute to Cherrie from Theodore Roosevelt.) US

Leo E. Miller. In the Wilds of South America: Six years of exploration in Colombia, Venezuela, British Guiana, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil. Scribners 1918. Color plate by L.A. Fuertes. Includes a detailed account of the AMNH Colombia expedition and Miller's account of the "River of Doubt" expedition. US

S. Dillon Ripley. Search for the Spiny Babbler: A naturalist's adventures in Nepal. Houghton Mifflin 1952 & Second edition (Nepal), 1978. US | UK

George Miksch Sutton. At a Bend in a Mexican River. Fine color plates, including Bearded Wood-Partridge. Eriksson 1972. US

Cranbrook, Wonders of Nature in Southeast Asia

Earl of Cranbrook (ed.) Wonders of Nature in Southeast Asia. Excellent compilation of excerpts from famous and obscure works by the great explorers, with comments by Cranbrook throughout. Oxford University Press, 1997. UK

John Whitehead. The Exploration of Mount Kina Balu, North Borneo. Revised edition of the classic work published in 1893. Whitehead was the first European to reach the summit of Kinabalu, in 1888. The first edition included hand-colored plates and is now rare and valuable. Graham Brash, 1993. 400 pages. Color plates. UK

Mark Cocker. Birders: Tales of a tribe. British birders at home and abroad. 288 pages. Jonathan Cape & Atlantic Monthly Press. 2002. US | UK [Softcover - UK]

Bill Oddie's Gripping Yarns. 60 tales about birding originally published in Birdwatch magazine. 203 pages. A & C Black, 2000. US | UK

Bill Oddie. Follow that Bird! Around the world with a passionate birdwatcher. Stories about bird trips around the world. 172 pages. Robson, 1997. [Complete list of Bill Oddie's books.] US | UK

Kenn Kaufman. Kingbird Highway: The story of a natural obsession that got a little out of hand. 336 pages. Houghton Mifflin 2000 (1997). US | UK

James M. Vardaman. Call Collect, Ask for Birdman. St. Martin's Press, 1980. [Avoid the cheap, paperback reprint, which omitted the photographs.] US

Jonathan Weiner. The Beak of the Finch: A story of evolution in our time. Pulitzer Prize winning book about the Grants' research on Darwin's Finches in the Galápagos. 332 pages. Vintage Books 1995 (1994). US | UK

Tim Flannery. Throwim Way Leg: Tree kangaroos, possums, and penis gourds. On the track of unknown mammals in wildest New Guinea. 336 pages. Atlantic Monthly Press & Orion, 1998. US | UK

Alan Rabinowitz. Beyond the Last Village: A Journey of Discovery in Asia's Forbidden Wilderness. A mammologist in remote areas of north Burma. Maps, photos. 336 pages. Island Press & Aurum Press. 2001. US | UK