Birders

For thirty years, journalist Mark Cocker has been a member of a community of fanatics who sacrifice most of their spare time, a good deal of money, sometimes their chances of a partner or family, even their lives, to watch birds. Now he offers what The Baltimore Sun calls "the most graceful, respectful and technically rich book on [this] fasination....If you're drawn to feathers, you ust read this as a treatise of the best of the fancy. If you just like nuttiness, it's a damned fine read." In Birders, Cocker not only introduces lay-readers to the venerable art of birding but shares some of the incredible tales previously circulated only among "the loop, " involving unforgettable--and sometimes deadly--encounters with everything from pipits, puffins, and plovers to border-patrol officers and horseback bandits. And then there is his personal journey, which began when he discovered a nest of pigeon eggs in his family attic and soon led to the fetishism of his binoculars (or rather, "bins"). Birders is "a combined celebration of and an apologia for the national passion for birding...Persuasive, idiosyncratic, and often quite amuzing" (Kirkus Reviews).