
Flight Paths
How a Passionate and Quirky Group of Pioneering Scientists Solved the Mystery of Bird Migration
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $25.19
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Allyson Ryan
-
By:
-
Rebecca Heisman
About this listen
The captivating, little-known true story of a group of scientists and the methods and technology they developed to uncover the secrets of avian migration.
For the past century, scientists and naturalists have been steadily unravelling the secrets of bird migration. How and why birds navigate the skies, traveling from continent to continent—flying thousands of miles across the earth each fall and spring—has continually fascinated the human imagination, but only recently have we been able to fully understand these amazing journeys. Although we know much more than ever before, even the most enthusiastic birdwatcher may not know how we got here, the ways that the full breadth of scientific disciplines have come together to reveal these annual avian travels.
Flight Paths is the never-before-told story of how a group of migration-obsessed scientists in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries engaged nearly every branch of science to understand bird migration—from where and when they take off to their flight paths and behaviors, their destinations and the challenges they encounter getting there. Uniting curious minds from across generations, continents, and disciplines, bird enthusiast and science writer Rebecca Heisman traces the development of each technique used for tracking migratory birds, from the first attempts to mark individual birds to the cutting-edge technology that lets ornithologists trace where a bird has been, based on unique DNA markers. Along the way, she touches on the biggest technological breakthroughs of modern science and reveals the almost-forgotten stories of the scientists who harnessed these inventions in service of furthering our understanding of nature (and their personal obsession with birds).
The compelling and fascinating story of how scientists solved the great mystery of bird migration, Flight Paths is an unprecedented look into exciting, behind-the-scenes moments of groundbreaking discovery. Heisman demonstrates that the real power of science happens when people work together, focusing their minds and knowledge on a common goal. While the world looks to tackle massive challenges involving conservation and climate, the story of migration research offers a beacon of hope that we can find solutions to difficult and complex problems.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2023 Rebecca Heisman (P)2023 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
-
What an Owl Knows
- The New Science of the World's Most Enigmatic Birds
- By: Jennifer Ackerman
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ackerman
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For millennia, owls have captivated and intrigued us. Our fascination with these mysterious birds was first documented more than thirty thousand years ago in the Chauvet Cave paintings in southern France. With their forward gaze and quiet flight, owls are often a symbol of wisdom, knowledge, and foresight. But what does an owl really know? And what do we really know about owls? Jennifer Ackerman illuminates the rich biology and natural history of these birds and reveals remarkable new scientific discoveries about their brains and behavior.
-
-
The dedication and fierce commitment of the author
- By Michael G. T. Thompson on 12-17-24
-
The (Big) Year That Flew By
- Twelve Months, Six Continents, and the Ultimate Birding Record
- By: Arjan Dwarshuis, Mark Obmascik - foreword
- Narrated by: Madison Niederhauser
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Arjan Dwarshuis first heard of the “Big Year”—the legendary record for birdwatching—he was twenty years old, it was midnight, and he was sitting on the roof of a truck in the Andean Mountains. In that moment he promised himself that, someday, somehow, he would become a world-record-holding birder. Ten years later, he embarked on an incredible, arduous, and perilous journey that took him around the globe; over uninhabited islands, through dense unforgiving rainforests, across snowy mountain peaks and unrelenting deserts—in just a single year.
-
-
Disappointing
- By nick on 10-14-23
By: Arjan Dwarshuis, and others
-
Better Living Through Birding
- Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
- By: Christian Cooper
- Narrated by: Christian Cooper
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Christian Cooper is a self-described “Blerd” (Black nerd), an avid comics fan and expert birder who devotes every spring to gazing upon the migratory birds that stop to rest in Central Park, just a subway ride away from where he lives in New York City. While in the park one morning in May 2020, Cooper was engaged in the birdwatching ritual that had been a part of his life since he was ten years old when what might have been a routine encounter with a dog walker exploded age-oldracial tensions. Cooper’s viral video of the incident would send shock waves through the nation.
-
-
If you’re not a birder yet, you soon will be.
- By Anonymous on 06-19-23
By: Christian Cooper
-
Birding Without Borders
- An Obsession, a Quest, and the Biggest Year in the World
- By: Noah Strycker
- Narrated by: Luke Welland
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With an itinerary covering 41 countries, spanning all seven continents, and armed with a backpack, binoculars, and a series of one-way tickets, he sets out on the greatest adventure in the birding world. Along the way he meets a colorful cast of fellow birders—and discovers a world of blood-sucking leeches, chronic sleep deprivation, floods, war zones, ecologic devastation, and conservation triumphs.
-
-
Birding and travel. Win win.
- By Melinda Wheeler on 11-29-23
By: Noah Strycker
-
A Wing and a Prayer
- The Race to Save Our Vanishing Birds
- By: Anders Gyllenhaal, Beverly Gyllenhaal
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Stephen Graybill
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For the past year, veteran journalists Anders and Beverly Gyllenhaal traveled more than 25,000 miles across the Americas, chronicling costly experiments, contentious politics, and new technologies to save our beloved birds from the brink of extinction. Through this compelling drama, A Wing and a Prayer offers hope and an urgent call to action: Birds are dying at an unprecedented pace. But there are encouraging breakthroughs across the hemisphere and still time to change course, if we act quickly.
-
-
Memoir disguised as nature
- By adel on 12-26-23
By: Anders Gyllenhaal, and others
-
The Bird Way
- A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think
- By: Jennifer Ackerman
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ackerman
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"There is the mammal way and there is the bird way." But the bird way is much more than a unique pattern of brain wiring, and lately, scientists have taken a new look at bird behaviors they have, for years, dismissed as anomalies or mysteries - what they are finding is upending the traditional view of how birds conduct their lives, how they communicate, forage, court, breed, survive. They are also revealing the remarkable intelligence underlying these activities, abilities we once considered uniquely our own.
-
-
Good Work but it doesn’t scale
- By Stanley Lippman on 07-02-20
-
What an Owl Knows
- The New Science of the World's Most Enigmatic Birds
- By: Jennifer Ackerman
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ackerman
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For millennia, owls have captivated and intrigued us. Our fascination with these mysterious birds was first documented more than thirty thousand years ago in the Chauvet Cave paintings in southern France. With their forward gaze and quiet flight, owls are often a symbol of wisdom, knowledge, and foresight. But what does an owl really know? And what do we really know about owls? Jennifer Ackerman illuminates the rich biology and natural history of these birds and reveals remarkable new scientific discoveries about their brains and behavior.
-
-
The dedication and fierce commitment of the author
- By Michael G. T. Thompson on 12-17-24
-
The (Big) Year That Flew By
- Twelve Months, Six Continents, and the Ultimate Birding Record
- By: Arjan Dwarshuis, Mark Obmascik - foreword
- Narrated by: Madison Niederhauser
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Arjan Dwarshuis first heard of the “Big Year”—the legendary record for birdwatching—he was twenty years old, it was midnight, and he was sitting on the roof of a truck in the Andean Mountains. In that moment he promised himself that, someday, somehow, he would become a world-record-holding birder. Ten years later, he embarked on an incredible, arduous, and perilous journey that took him around the globe; over uninhabited islands, through dense unforgiving rainforests, across snowy mountain peaks and unrelenting deserts—in just a single year.
-
-
Disappointing
- By nick on 10-14-23
By: Arjan Dwarshuis, and others
-
Better Living Through Birding
- Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
- By: Christian Cooper
- Narrated by: Christian Cooper
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Christian Cooper is a self-described “Blerd” (Black nerd), an avid comics fan and expert birder who devotes every spring to gazing upon the migratory birds that stop to rest in Central Park, just a subway ride away from where he lives in New York City. While in the park one morning in May 2020, Cooper was engaged in the birdwatching ritual that had been a part of his life since he was ten years old when what might have been a routine encounter with a dog walker exploded age-oldracial tensions. Cooper’s viral video of the incident would send shock waves through the nation.
-
-
If you’re not a birder yet, you soon will be.
- By Anonymous on 06-19-23
By: Christian Cooper
-
Birding Without Borders
- An Obsession, a Quest, and the Biggest Year in the World
- By: Noah Strycker
- Narrated by: Luke Welland
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With an itinerary covering 41 countries, spanning all seven continents, and armed with a backpack, binoculars, and a series of one-way tickets, he sets out on the greatest adventure in the birding world. Along the way he meets a colorful cast of fellow birders—and discovers a world of blood-sucking leeches, chronic sleep deprivation, floods, war zones, ecologic devastation, and conservation triumphs.
-
-
Birding and travel. Win win.
- By Melinda Wheeler on 11-29-23
By: Noah Strycker
-
A Wing and a Prayer
- The Race to Save Our Vanishing Birds
- By: Anders Gyllenhaal, Beverly Gyllenhaal
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Stephen Graybill
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For the past year, veteran journalists Anders and Beverly Gyllenhaal traveled more than 25,000 miles across the Americas, chronicling costly experiments, contentious politics, and new technologies to save our beloved birds from the brink of extinction. Through this compelling drama, A Wing and a Prayer offers hope and an urgent call to action: Birds are dying at an unprecedented pace. But there are encouraging breakthroughs across the hemisphere and still time to change course, if we act quickly.
-
-
Memoir disguised as nature
- By adel on 12-26-23
By: Anders Gyllenhaal, and others
-
The Bird Way
- A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think
- By: Jennifer Ackerman
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ackerman
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"There is the mammal way and there is the bird way." But the bird way is much more than a unique pattern of brain wiring, and lately, scientists have taken a new look at bird behaviors they have, for years, dismissed as anomalies or mysteries - what they are finding is upending the traditional view of how birds conduct their lives, how they communicate, forage, court, breed, survive. They are also revealing the remarkable intelligence underlying these activities, abilities we once considered uniquely our own.
-
-
Good Work but it doesn’t scale
- By Stanley Lippman on 07-02-20
-
Birds and Us
- A 12,000-Year History from Cave Art to Conservation
- By: Tim Birkhead
- Narrated by: Tim Birkhead
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since the dawn of human history, birds have stirred our imagination, inspiring and challenging our ideas about science, faith, art, and philosophy. We have worshipped birds as gods, hunted them for sustenance, adorned ourselves with their feathers, studied their wings to engineer flight, and, more recently, attempted to protect them. In Birds and Us, award-winning writer and ornithologist Tim Birkhead takes us on a dazzling epic journey through our mutual history with birds.
-
-
Why birds ate important
- By Amazon Customer on 06-22-24
By: Tim Birkhead
-
Crossings
- How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet
- By: Ben Goldfarb
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Some 40 million miles of roadways encircle the earth, yet we tend to regard them only as infrastructure for human convenience. While roads are so ubiquitous they're practically invisible to us, wild animals experience them as entirely alien forces of death and disruption. In Crossings, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb travels throughout the United States and around the world to investigate how roads have transformed our planet. A million animals are killed by cars each day in the US alone, but as the new science of road ecology shows, the harms of highways extend far beyond roadkill.
-
-
Great book, but narration doesn’t fit.
- By Anonymous User on 09-22-23
By: Ben Goldfarb
-
An Immense World
- How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
- By: Ed Yong
- Narrated by: Ed Yong
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world. In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us.
-
-
If you’ve never read about the wonder of animal sensory capabilities this is for you
- By MediaBaron on 06-27-22
By: Ed Yong
-
The Wager
- A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
- By: David Grann
- Narrated by: Dion Graham, David Grann
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty’s Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as “the prize of all the oceans,” it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia.
-
-
Gasping for Air
- By Jean Engle on 04-19-23
By: David Grann
-
Birding Under the Influence
- Cycling Across America in Search of Birds and Recovery
- By: Dorian Anderson
- Narrated by: Madison Niederhauser
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Birding Under the Influence, Dorian Anderson, a neuroscience researcher on a pressure-filled life trajectory, walks away from the world of elite institutions, research labs, and academic publishing. In doing so, he falls in love and discovers he has freed himself to embrace his lifelong passion for birding.
-
-
Fantastic audiobook
- By Michael Hubka on 11-05-23
By: Dorian Anderson
-
Birds by the Shore
- Observing the Natural Life of the Atlantic Coast
- By: Jennifer Ackerman
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ackerman
- Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For three years, Jennifer Ackerman lived in the small coastal town of Lewes, Delaware, in the sort of blue-water, white-sand landscape that draws summer crowds up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Birds by the Shore is a book about discovering the natural life at the ocean's edge: the habits of shorebirds and seabirds, the movement of sand and water, the wealth of creatures that survive amid storm and surf. Against this landscape's rhythms, Ackerman revisits her own history - her mother's death, her father's illness, and her hopes to have children of her own.
-
-
Learned a lot
- By Amazon Customer on 07-01-19
-
A World on the Wing
- The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds
- By: Scott Weidensaul
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the past two decades, our understanding of the navigational and physiological feats that enable birds to cross immense oceans, fly above the highest mountains, or remain in unbroken flight for months at a stretch has exploded. What we've learned of these key migrations is nothing short of extraordinary. This breathtaking work of nature writing also introduces listeners to those scientists, researchers, and bird lovers trying to preserve global migratory patterns in the face of climate change and other environmental challenges.
-
-
Fantastic book for any nature enthusiast
- By FernT on 05-23-21
By: Scott Weidensaul
-
The Sixth Extinction
- An Unnatural History
- By: Elizabeth Kolbert
- Narrated by: Anne Twomey
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A major audiobook about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes. Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on Earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.
-
-
Lifts you out of the ordinary
- By Regina on 04-28-14
-
Owls of the Eastern Ice
- A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl
- By: Jonathan C. Slaght
- Narrated by: Jonathan C. Slaght
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When he was just a fledgling birdwatcher, Jonathan C. Slaght had a chance encounter with one of the most mysterious birds on Earth. Bigger than any owl he knew, it looked like a small bear with decorative feathers. He snapped a quick photo and shared it with experts. Soon he was on a five-year journey, searching for this enormous, enigmatic creature in the lush, remote forests of Eastern Russia. That first sighting set his calling as a scientist.
-
-
Well written, interesting
- By Ellen Gilmartin on 01-18-22
-
A Most Remarkable Creature
- The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World's Smartest Birds of Prey
- By: Jonathan Meiburg
- Narrated by: Jonathan Meiburg
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An enthralling account of a modern voyage of discovery as we meet the clever, social birds of prey called caracaras, which puzzled Darwin, fascinate modern-day falconers, and carry secrets of our planet's deep past in their family history.
-
-
I don't leave reviews often, but . . .
- By Steven L Peck on 06-24-21
By: Jonathan Meiburg
-
National Geographic Birding Basics
- Tips, Tools, and Techniques for Great Bird-Watching
- By: Noah Strycker
- Narrated by: Dan Bittner
- Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Targeted to beginners and beyond, National Geographic's fun, inspiring guide to the art, craft, and science of bird-watching combines practical know-how and expert knowledge. Browsable and bursting with helpful illustrations and photographs, Birding Basics offers new ideas for when, where, and how to get to know the birds in your world.
-
-
Narration is very inviting
- By Anonymous User on 10-31-24
By: Noah Strycker
-
Wanderlust
- An Eccentric Explorer, an Epic Journey, a Lost Age
- By: Reid Mitenbuler
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 19 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Deep in the Arctic wilderness, Peter Freuchen awoke to find himself buried alive under the snow. During a sudden blizzard the night before, he had taken shelter underneath his dogsled and become trapped there while he slept. Now, as feeling drained from his body, he managed to claw a hole through the ice only to find himself in even greater danger: his beard, wet with condensation from his struggling breath, had frozen to his sled runners and lashed his head in place, exposing it to icy winds that needed only a few minutes to kill him. If Freuchen could escape that, he could escape anything.
-
-
Amazingly in-depth look at an amazing person.
- By Dave on 06-18-23
By: Reid Mitenbuler
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Birds That Audubon Missed
- Discovery and Desire in the American Wilderness
- By: Kenn Kaufman
- Narrated by: Mack Sanderson
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Raging ambition. Towering egos. Competition under a veneer of courtesy. Heroic effort combined with plagiarism, theft, exaggeration, and fraud. This was the state of bird study in eastern North America during the early 1800s, as a handful of intrepid men raced to find the last few birds that were still unknown to science. The most famous name in the bird world was John James Audubon, who painted spectacular portraits of birds. But although his images were beautiful, creating art was not his main goal. Instead, he aimed to illustrate (and write about) as many different species as possible.
-
-
I LOVE the audible version of this book
- By NYC person on 10-01-24
By: Kenn Kaufman
-
Birding Under the Influence
- Cycling Across America in Search of Birds and Recovery
- By: Dorian Anderson
- Narrated by: Madison Niederhauser
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Birding Under the Influence, Dorian Anderson, a neuroscience researcher on a pressure-filled life trajectory, walks away from the world of elite institutions, research labs, and academic publishing. In doing so, he falls in love and discovers he has freed himself to embrace his lifelong passion for birding.
-
-
Fantastic audiobook
- By Michael Hubka on 11-05-23
By: Dorian Anderson
-
The (Big) Year That Flew By
- Twelve Months, Six Continents, and the Ultimate Birding Record
- By: Arjan Dwarshuis, Mark Obmascik - foreword
- Narrated by: Madison Niederhauser
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Arjan Dwarshuis first heard of the “Big Year”—the legendary record for birdwatching—he was twenty years old, it was midnight, and he was sitting on the roof of a truck in the Andean Mountains. In that moment he promised himself that, someday, somehow, he would become a world-record-holding birder. Ten years later, he embarked on an incredible, arduous, and perilous journey that took him around the globe; over uninhabited islands, through dense unforgiving rainforests, across snowy mountain peaks and unrelenting deserts—in just a single year.
-
-
Disappointing
- By nick on 10-14-23
By: Arjan Dwarshuis, and others
-
A World on the Wing
- The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds
- By: Scott Weidensaul
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the past two decades, our understanding of the navigational and physiological feats that enable birds to cross immense oceans, fly above the highest mountains, or remain in unbroken flight for months at a stretch has exploded. What we've learned of these key migrations is nothing short of extraordinary. This breathtaking work of nature writing also introduces listeners to those scientists, researchers, and bird lovers trying to preserve global migratory patterns in the face of climate change and other environmental challenges.
-
-
Fantastic book for any nature enthusiast
- By FernT on 05-23-21
By: Scott Weidensaul
-
The Life of Birds (Updated Edition)
- By: David Attenborough
- Narrated by: David Attenborough
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Birds. Over 9,000 species, the most widespread of all animals: on icebergs, in the Sahara or under the sea, at home in our gardens or flying for over a year at a time. Earthbound, we can only look and listen, enjoying their lightness, freedom and richness of plumage and song. David Attenborough has been watching and learning all his life. His classic book, now fully updated with the latest discoveries in ornithology, is a brilliant introduction to bird behaviours around the world: what they do and why they do it.
-
-
Delightful and comprehensive, presented with masterful narration by David Attenborough.
- By Steve A on 06-27-24
-
Birds and Us
- A 12,000-Year History from Cave Art to Conservation
- By: Tim Birkhead
- Narrated by: Tim Birkhead
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since the dawn of human history, birds have stirred our imagination, inspiring and challenging our ideas about science, faith, art, and philosophy. We have worshipped birds as gods, hunted them for sustenance, adorned ourselves with their feathers, studied their wings to engineer flight, and, more recently, attempted to protect them. In Birds and Us, award-winning writer and ornithologist Tim Birkhead takes us on a dazzling epic journey through our mutual history with birds.
-
-
Why birds ate important
- By Amazon Customer on 06-22-24
By: Tim Birkhead
-
The Birds That Audubon Missed
- Discovery and Desire in the American Wilderness
- By: Kenn Kaufman
- Narrated by: Mack Sanderson
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Raging ambition. Towering egos. Competition under a veneer of courtesy. Heroic effort combined with plagiarism, theft, exaggeration, and fraud. This was the state of bird study in eastern North America during the early 1800s, as a handful of intrepid men raced to find the last few birds that were still unknown to science. The most famous name in the bird world was John James Audubon, who painted spectacular portraits of birds. But although his images were beautiful, creating art was not his main goal. Instead, he aimed to illustrate (and write about) as many different species as possible.
-
-
I LOVE the audible version of this book
- By NYC person on 10-01-24
By: Kenn Kaufman
-
Birding Under the Influence
- Cycling Across America in Search of Birds and Recovery
- By: Dorian Anderson
- Narrated by: Madison Niederhauser
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Birding Under the Influence, Dorian Anderson, a neuroscience researcher on a pressure-filled life trajectory, walks away from the world of elite institutions, research labs, and academic publishing. In doing so, he falls in love and discovers he has freed himself to embrace his lifelong passion for birding.
-
-
Fantastic audiobook
- By Michael Hubka on 11-05-23
By: Dorian Anderson
-
The (Big) Year That Flew By
- Twelve Months, Six Continents, and the Ultimate Birding Record
- By: Arjan Dwarshuis, Mark Obmascik - foreword
- Narrated by: Madison Niederhauser
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Arjan Dwarshuis first heard of the “Big Year”—the legendary record for birdwatching—he was twenty years old, it was midnight, and he was sitting on the roof of a truck in the Andean Mountains. In that moment he promised himself that, someday, somehow, he would become a world-record-holding birder. Ten years later, he embarked on an incredible, arduous, and perilous journey that took him around the globe; over uninhabited islands, through dense unforgiving rainforests, across snowy mountain peaks and unrelenting deserts—in just a single year.
-
-
Disappointing
- By nick on 10-14-23
By: Arjan Dwarshuis, and others
-
A World on the Wing
- The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds
- By: Scott Weidensaul
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the past two decades, our understanding of the navigational and physiological feats that enable birds to cross immense oceans, fly above the highest mountains, or remain in unbroken flight for months at a stretch has exploded. What we've learned of these key migrations is nothing short of extraordinary. This breathtaking work of nature writing also introduces listeners to those scientists, researchers, and bird lovers trying to preserve global migratory patterns in the face of climate change and other environmental challenges.
-
-
Fantastic book for any nature enthusiast
- By FernT on 05-23-21
By: Scott Weidensaul
-
The Life of Birds (Updated Edition)
- By: David Attenborough
- Narrated by: David Attenborough
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Birds. Over 9,000 species, the most widespread of all animals: on icebergs, in the Sahara or under the sea, at home in our gardens or flying for over a year at a time. Earthbound, we can only look and listen, enjoying their lightness, freedom and richness of plumage and song. David Attenborough has been watching and learning all his life. His classic book, now fully updated with the latest discoveries in ornithology, is a brilliant introduction to bird behaviours around the world: what they do and why they do it.
-
-
Delightful and comprehensive, presented with masterful narration by David Attenborough.
- By Steve A on 06-27-24
-
Birds and Us
- A 12,000-Year History from Cave Art to Conservation
- By: Tim Birkhead
- Narrated by: Tim Birkhead
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since the dawn of human history, birds have stirred our imagination, inspiring and challenging our ideas about science, faith, art, and philosophy. We have worshipped birds as gods, hunted them for sustenance, adorned ourselves with their feathers, studied their wings to engineer flight, and, more recently, attempted to protect them. In Birds and Us, award-winning writer and ornithologist Tim Birkhead takes us on a dazzling epic journey through our mutual history with birds.
-
-
Why birds ate important
- By Amazon Customer on 06-22-24
By: Tim Birkhead
-
Grizzly Confidential
- An Astounding Journey into the Secret Life of North America’s Most Fearsome Predator
- By: Kevin Grange
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Author Kevin Grange—former paramedic and park ranger at Yellowstone and Grand Teton—comes face-to-face with North America’s most fearsome predator, Ursus Arctos. His quest takes him from his home in the Tetons to an eerie, mist-shrouded island of gigantic bruins; from the Bear Center at Washington State University—where scientists believe the secrets of hibernation might help treat diabetes, heart disease, and obesity in humans—to the dark underbelly of for-profit wildlife parks, illegal animal trade and black markets hawking bear bile.
-
-
Curiosity into knowledge
- By Benjamin Rammell on 01-10-25
By: Kevin Grange
-
Consumed
- The Need for Collective Change: Colonialism, Climate Change, and Consumerism
- By: Aja Barber
- Narrated by: Aja Barber
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We live in a world of stuff. We dispose of most of it in as little as six months after we receive it. The byproducts of our quest to consume are creating an environmental crisis. Aja Barber wants to change this - and you can, too. In Consumed, Barber calls for change within an industry that regularly overreaches with abandon, creating real imbalances in the environment and the lives of those who do the work - often in unsafe conditions for very low pay - and the billionaires who receive the most profit.
-
-
Everyone, please read this
- By Mairi Honickman on 12-11-21
By: Aja Barber
-
Living on Earth
- Forests, Corals, Consciousness, and the Making of the World
- By: Peter Godfrey-Smith
- Narrated by: Mitch Riley, Peter Godfrey-Smith
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
If the history of the Earth were compressed down to a year, our species would arise in the last thirty minutes or so of the final hour. But life itself is not such a late arrival: It has existed on Earth for something like 3.7 billion years—most of our planet’s history and over a quarter of the age of the universe (as far as we can tell). What have these organisms—bacteria, animals, plants, and the rest—done in all this time? In Living on Earth, the philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith proposes a new way of understanding how the actions of living beings have shaped our planet.
-
-
Worth every minute…
- By Anonymous User on 12-19-24
-
Birding to Change the World
- A Memoir
- By: Trish O'Kane
- Narrated by: Cheryl Smith
- Length: 13 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Trish O’Kane is an accidental ornithologist. In her nearly two decades writing about justice as an investigative journalist, she'd never paid attention to nature. But then Hurricane Katrina destroyed her New Orleans home, sending her into an emotional tailspin. Enter a scrappy cast of feathered characters—first a cardinal, urban parrots, and sparrows, then a catbird, owls, a bittern, and a woodcock—that cheered her up and showed her a new path. Inspired, O'Kane moved to Madison, Wisconsin, to pursue an environmental studies PhD.
-
-
Not just for bird lovers but for everyone
- By Cathy on 05-28-24
By: Trish O'Kane
-
Last Light
- How Six Great Artists Made Old Age a Time of Triumph
- By: Richard Lacayo
- Narrated by: Mack Sanderson
- Length: 13 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the nation’s top art critics shows how six great artists made old age a time of triumph by producing some of the greatest work of their long careers—and, in some cases, changing the course of art history. Though these six artists differed in many respects, they shared one thing: a determination to go on creating, driven not by the bounding energies of youth but by the ticking clock that would inspire them to produce some of their greatest masterpieces.
-
-
An art history course in one slim book
- By LC on 02-19-23
By: Richard Lacayo
-
Why Am I Like This?
- My Brain Isn't Broken (and Neither Is Yours)
- By: Gemma Styles
- Narrated by: Gemma Styles
- Length: 7 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why do I feel so overwhelmed? Why did I say that embarrassing thing? Is everyone else achieving more than me? What can I actually do to make a difference? Am I the only one feeling this way? In her internationally bestselling debut book—which draws on her own experience with mental health issues and neurodivergence—writer, podcaster, and advocate Gemma Styles captures the voice of her generation as she gets curious about how we tick in order to better understand and navigate the unique pressures of life today.
-
-
Amazing
- By Cannabis Girl on 04-03-25
By: Gemma Styles
-
Guardians of the Valley
- John Muir and the Friendship That Saved Yosemite
- By: Dean King
- Narrated by: Samantha Desz
- Length: 14 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In June of 1889 in San Francisco, John Muir—iconic environmentalist, writer, and philosopher—meets face-to-face for the first time with his longtime editor Robert Underwood Johnson, an elegant and influential figure at The Century magazine. Before long, the pair, opposites in many ways, decide to venture to Yosemite Valley, the magnificent site where twenty years earlier, Muir experienced a personal and spiritual awakening that would set the course of the rest of his life.
-
-
An engaging book on the history of Yosemite
- By Mark James on 03-27-23
By: Dean King
-
All the Lives We Never Lived
- By: Anuradha Roy
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the Man Booker Prize-nominated author of Sleeping on Jupiter, The Folded Earth, and An Atlas of Impossible Longing, a poignant and sweeping novel set in India during World War II and the present day about a son’s quest to uncover the truth about his mother....
-
-
Beautiful book
- By Sonia S. on 12-13-19
By: Anuradha Roy
-
The Bird Way
- A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think
- By: Jennifer Ackerman
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ackerman
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"There is the mammal way and there is the bird way." But the bird way is much more than a unique pattern of brain wiring, and lately, scientists have taken a new look at bird behaviors they have, for years, dismissed as anomalies or mysteries - what they are finding is upending the traditional view of how birds conduct their lives, how they communicate, forage, court, breed, survive. They are also revealing the remarkable intelligence underlying these activities, abilities we once considered uniquely our own.
-
-
Good Work but it doesn’t scale
- By Stanley Lippman on 07-02-20
-
The Great Unexpected
- By: Dan Mooney
- Narrated by: Aidan Kelly
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joel lives in a nursing home, and he’s not one bit happy about it. He hates being told when to eat, when to sleep, when to take his pills. He’s fed up with life and begins to plan a way out when his new roommate, a retired soap opera actor named Frank, moves in and turns the nursing-home community upside down.
-
-
Really enjoyed this
- By Carmen K. Pollic on 04-10-23
By: Dan Mooney
-
The Great Mental Models
- General Thinking Concepts
- By: Shane Parrish
- Narrated by: Shane Parrish
- Length: 3 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts is the first book in The Great Mental Models series designed to upgrade your thinking with the best, most useful and powerful tools so you always have the right one on hand. This volume details nine of the most versatile all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making, your productivity, and how clearly you see the world.
-
-
A dissapointing debut
- By Peter on 04-14-19
By: Shane Parrish
-
Sand Talk
- How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
- By: Tyson Yunkaporta
- Narrated by: Tyson Yunkaporta
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A paradigm-shifting book in the vein of Sapiens that brings a crucial Indigenous perspective to historical and cultural issues of history, education, money, power, and sustainability - and offers a new template for living. As an indigenous person, Tyson Yunkaporta looks at global systems from a unique perspective, one tied to the natural and spiritual world. In considering how contemporary life diverges from the pattern of creation, he raises important questions. How does this affect us? How can we do things differently?
-
-
um...
- By Michael D. Phillips on 01-12-21
By: Tyson Yunkaporta
Fascinating Look at the Science Behind Migration
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Great scientific overview
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Where did my summer tanager go?
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Loved every minute of it
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Enjoyable read
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
BIRDS!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Very Good
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Captivating story
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I should have read the description more carefully
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Poor narration, seemed AI generated. Unlistenable at times
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.