Coffee Table Book of: Hummingbirds (Hardcover)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Hummingbirds is a large format book of hummingbirds, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: hummingbirds perched and hovering at blossoms, their jewelled throats seen close, their tiny nests, eggs and chicks, and the meadows, deserts, rainforests and misty mountain forests where they live, at many hours and in every season.

They hover at red columbine, cardinal flowers, trumpet creeper, scarlet gilia, fireweed, flowering currant, penstemon, heliconias, banana flowers and passion flowers, bathe in the spray of a small waterfall, catch gnats over an evening meadow, drink sap from rows of holes in birch bark, sit out a snowfall and sleep fluffed on a twig under the moon.

Seen close, a ruby throat, a copper throat and a fiery gold one glitter, a broad bill shows red, pollen dusts a forehead, two tiny feet grip a twig and a tail fans wide. The nests are tiny cups of plant down bound with spider silk and dressed with lichen, holding two white eggs and then two hungry chicks, while a hermit’s slim nest hangs from the tip of a leaf.

The places stand empty at dawn, noon and dusk, in mist, rain, frost and snow: an alpine meadow at sunrise, a cloud forest in morning mist, ocotillo and agave in the desert, a coral tree on a dry plain, heliconias after rain, a high cold grassland in fog, and a beach below the dunes where the autumn crossing of the sea begins.

Short notes run through the book, on how hummingbirds fly, feed and raise their young, the flowers that depend on them, and their long migrations: a male’s throat looks almost black until light strikes it head on, when it flashes ruby red, the sword billed hummingbird is the only bird whose bill is longer than its body, not counting the tail, the white eared hummingbird is named for the bold white stripe that runs back from each eye, and on cold nights a hummingbird can sink into torpor, a deep sleep that slows its heart and saves energy.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a hardcover with the art printed on the case.