OUTDOORS / NATURE
We love guidebooks. Well, all reference books are interesting here at Whistlestop, but guides and references to the natural world and how to get about in it with ever-increasing knowledge and familiarity are important to us. This page conveys our current holdings and whatever reliable Pennsylvania or regional books we carry. "Survival" books will be here, too, although we hope you won't find yourself in that extremity. Historical "survival" books have a deep interest as well, because they often re-create a sense of what the world was like when we did not depend so blindly on technology. Here's the world -- enjoy!
The Hawk's Way: Encounters with Fierce Beauty
The Hawk's Way: Encounters with Fierce Beauty
A splendid and luminous celebration of one of nature’s most perfect and mysterious creatures—the hawk—from the New York Times bestselling author of the “astoundingly beautiful” (NPR) The Soul of an Octopus.
When Sy Montgomery went to spend a day at falconer Nancy Cowan’s farm, home to a dozen magnificent birds of prey, it was the start of a deep love affair. Nancy allowed her to work with Jazz, a feisty, four-year-old, female Harris’s hawk with a wingspan of more than four feet. Not a pet, Jazz was a fierce predator with talons that could pierce skin and bone and yet, she was willing to work with a human to hunt. From the first moment Jazz swept down from a tree and landed on Sy’s leather gloved fist, Sy fell under the hawk’s magnetic spell.
Over the next few years, Sy spent more time with these magnificent creatures, getting to know their extraordinary abilities and instincts. They are deeply emotional animals, quick to show anger and frustration, and can hold a grudge for years. But they are also loyal and intensely aware of their surroundings. In this mesmerizing account, featuring sixteen pages of gorgeous color photographs, Sy passionately and vividly reveals the wonderous world of hawks and what they can teach us about nature, life, and love.