Coffee Table Book of: Raptors, the Birds of Prey (Paperback)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Raptors, the Birds of Prey is a large format book of the daytime raptors, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: eagles, hawks, buzzards, falcons, kites, harriers, the osprey, vultures and the secretarybird, perched and in flight, their faces, feet and feathers seen close, their nests, eggs and chicks, and the wild places where they hunt, at many hours and in every season.

A golden eagle keeps watch from a rocky crag above an empty glen and soars over a snowfield at sunrise, a bald eagle rests on a driftwood log on a river gravel bar and two more stand at the edge of the winter ice, a white tailed eagle waits on a seaweed covered rock, a great sea eagle with a huge orange bill stands on a floe of sea ice in falling snow and a harpy eagle grips a mossy branch high in the rainforest.

A red tailed hawk sits on a rocky outcrop above dry grassland and again fluffed out in falling snow, a goshawk waits in a dark conifer forest, a red shouldered hawk perches in a wet spring wood, a buzzard soars in a spring sky and stands in a ploughed field in steady rain, and a rough legged buzzard hovers over open snow.

An osprey watches from a dead branch above a lake and carries a fish low over the water at sunrise, a red kite glides against a blue sky and perches on a bare oak, a black winged kite sits in a golden field at sunset, a marsh harrier glides over a golden reedbed and a pale grey harrier climbs into a spring sky.

Seen close are the golden nape of a golden eagle, a bald eagle’s jutting brow, a golden eagle’s feathered foot, a goshawk’s orange eye, a peregrine’s dark cheek stripe, a harrier’s round face, the comb of a condor, the bright bare head of a king vulture and the quill crest of a secretarybird.

Short notes run through the book, on how raptors hunt, see and fly, how they nest and raise their young, and the record holders among them: the golden eagle is named for the golden brown feathers on the back of its head and neck, the gyrfalcon is the largest falcon in the world, and some birds are almost pure white, the secretarybird’s name is often said to come from its crest of long quills, like a clerk’s pens, and peregrine chicks are called eyases, and they first fly at about six weeks old.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a paperback.