Birds of Tropical America
Birds of Tropical America
A Watcher's Introduction to Behavior, Breeding, and Diversity
The guide to neotropical bird behavior that picks up where field guides leave off.
Why are tropical birds like parrots and quetzals so much more colorful than those in more temperate climates? How can a vulture soaring thousands of feet above the canopy spot a dead rodent no bigger than a mouse on the rainforest floor? What permits sparrow-sized antbirds to not only survive but to thrive among relentless hordes of army ants that devour every other living thing in their path?
Steven Hilty has led birding tours to the American Tropics for decades. By providing answers to the hundreds of questions asked by participants of these expeditions, Hilty has produced a natural history of the bird life of the New World Tropics that is at once practical, accurate, and as endlessly fascinating as the species whose lives it reveals.
Birds of Tropical America was published by Chapters Publishing in 1994 and went out of print in 1997. UT Press is pleased to reissue it with a new epilogue and updated references.
Birds of Tropical America offers a comprehensive look into the lives of some of the most fascinating birds in the world. The book will entertain and educate the amateur birder and professional ornithologist alike and would be a valuable addition to libraries at home and university.
Hilty, who has led birding expeditions to Central and South America and the Caribbean, supplies not a field guide to species identification but rather a natural history of tropical birds. He writes about tropical diversity, nesting habits, the structure of a rain forest bird community, biogeography, Andean genealogy, bird migration within the tropics, bird color and patterns, seed dispersal, foraging techniques, courtship rituals, and song patterns. This is a fascinating book for enthusiastic birders and stay-at-home naturalists alike.
[Hilty] deals with such fascinating topics as why there are so many species in tropical America, why antbirds don’t eat ants, why there are so many flycatchers, why tropical birds are so colorful (or not), how hummingbirds survive and even prosper in the Andes, and what makes manakins and cotingas do their curious songs and dances. He writes with knowledge, grace, and humor. . . . After [Alexander] Skutch, Hilty is the finest synthesizer and popularizer of the life of Neotropical birds.
Steven Hilty is a professional guide with Victor Emanuel Nature Tours, the largest international birding tour organizer in the world. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona and is a Research Associate at the University of Kansas Museum of Natural History.
- Acknowledgments
- Dreams Meet Reality in the American Tropics: A Preface
- Avian Addresses: Structure of a Rainforest
- Bird Community Tropical Diversity: Why So Many Bird Species in Tropical Forests?
- Ghosts of Rainforests Past: Amazonian Biogeography
- High-Andean Genealogy: Unraveling Ice Age Secrets
- Tropical Travelers: Migration Within the Tropics
- The Clubbiest of Clubs: Life in a Mixed-Species Flock
- Antbirds Don't Eat Ants: Rhythms and Rituals at Ant Swarms
- Who Is the Fairest? Colorfulness in Tropical and Temperate Birds
- Fruit of the Land: Birds, Fruit and Seed Dispersal
- Anatomy of a Fruit Eater: Foraging Tactics of Fruit-Eating Birds
- A Good Song and Dance: Alternative Life-Styles of Manakins and Cotingas
- Territories or Traplines? Hummingbird Foraging Strategies
- Cold Reality: Highland Hummingbirds
- Sallying Forth: A Flycatcher Baedeker
- Finding a Needle in the Haystack: A Vulture's View of Paradise
- The Costs and Benefits of Growing Old: Life and Love Among the Caciques
- Sound Strategies: Sopranos Should Sing From the Treetops
- Perilous Paradise: Tropical River Islands
- In Search of a Season: When Do Tropical Birds Nest?
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
