Counting Birds
The Idea That Helped Save Our Feathered Friends
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Everyday kids learn how they can help protect bird species, near and far, with the award-winning book Counting Birds—the real-life story behind the first annual bird count.
What can you do to help endangered animals and make a positive change in our environment? Get counting! Counting Birds is a beautifully illustrated book that introduces kids to the idea of bird counts and bird watches. Along the way, they will learn about Frank Chapman, an ornithologist who wanted to see the end of the traditional Christmas bird hunt, an event in which people would shoot as many birds as possible on Christmas. Chapman, using his magazine Bird-Lore to promote the idea of counting birds, founded the first annual bird count.
More than a century after the first bird count, bird counting helps professional researchers collect data, share expertise, and spread valuable information to help all kinds of birds around the world, from condors to hawks to kestrels and more.
Counting Birds introduces kids to a whole feathered world that will fascinate and inspire them to get involved in conservation and become citizen scientists.
2019 Outstanding Science Trade Book for Students: K–12 (National Science Teachers Association and Children's Book Council)2019 Best STEM Book for K–12 Students (National Science Teachers Association and the Children's Book Council)Winner of the 2019 Riverby Award (The John Burroughs Association)Recipient of the 2019 Green Earth Book Award Honor (The Nature Generation)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Stemple introduces a little-known bird lover whose innovative idea contributed to the protection of avian friends worldwide. In the 19th century, U.S. ornithologist Frank Chapman spoke up to oppose the long-practiced tradition of Christmas Day bird hunting. Instead, he proposed a "Christmas bird-census... Count them, he proposed. But don't kill them." Working in cut-paper collage, Robin shows the types of birds that the first group of 27 bird watchers counted in 1900, a number that grew exponentially over time. "All birders are welcome," Stemple asserts, from the owlers who "climb out of their warm beds at midnight and call down owls in the dark" to those watching birds outside their windows. Photographs of children taking part in the Audubon Christmas Bird Count conclude this conservation success story. Ages 3 7.
