Feathers: Not Just for Flying

Feathers: Not Just for Flying
Author: Melissa Stewart
Publisher: Triangle Interactive, Inc.
Total Pages: 41
Release: 2018-03-29
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1684446945

Read Along or Enhanced eBook: Young naturalists meet sixteen birds in this elegant introduction to the many uses of feathers. A concise main text highlights how feathers are not just for flying. More curious readers are invited to explore informative sidebars, which underscore specific ways each bird uses its feathers for a variety of practical purposes. A scrapbook design showcases life-size feather illustrations.

Animals in Flight

Animals in Flight
Author: Robin Page
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 36
Release: 2005-05-30
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 0547349149

Wings carry tiny insects, fluttering butterflies, and backyard birds, and they even once propelled some dinosaurs up and through the skies. Find out how, when, and why birds and beasts have taken to the air, and discover how wings work in this informative and brilliantly illustrated book about flight.

The Feather Bender's Flytying Techniques

The Feather Bender's Flytying Techniques
Author: Barry Ord Clarke
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 737
Release: 2020-01-07
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1510751513

A comprehensive, lavishly illustrated guide to tying popular trout flies. This book is aimed at all fly tyers, from those with modest experience to those with more advanced skills. The author’s intention is to focus on certain important elementary techniques, and then share some of his favorite contemporary twists on old, tried-and-true techniques. Many of the flies in this book are based in his own techniques and patterns, ones that he has developed in more than thirty-five years of tying. The book is arranged in sections to give readers the opportunity to easily locate the pattern or technique they are looking for. Patterns are not grouped alphabetically, but by technique. For example, the section on dry flies has categories demonstrating a particular dry fly style or technique such as mastering the use of deer hair, parachute, CDC, and so on. If you are fairly new to fly tying, the opening chapters on materials and special techniques and tricks will familiarize you with some basics and help you get started. Seasoned tyers will similarly find information here to help them raise their tying skills to a new level. Each pattern is listed with a recipe, recommended hook style, size, and materials. They are listed in the order that that author uses them, and illustrated by the book’s step-by-step images. This will help you plan each pattern and assemble materials your beforehand. Included are lushly illustrated photos for such well-known trout flies as: Pheasant tail nymph Klinkhamer Humpy Deer Hair Irresistible CDC Mayfly Spinner And much more. A special feature of this one-of-a-kind books is that its the first tying book to have a video link for all the patterns featured. Watch the author tying online, then turn to the matching chapter in the book to follow the step-by-step instructions so that you can tie your own fly in your own time. Author Barry Ord Clarke will respond online to your questions.

Taking Wing

Taking Wing
Author: Pat Shipman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 344
Release: 1999-01-15
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0684849658

In 1861, just a few years after the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, a scientist named Hermann von Meyer made an amazing discovery. Hidden in the Bavarian region of Germany was a fossil skeleton so exquisitely preserved that its wings and feathers were as obvious as its reptilian jaws and tail. This transitional creature offered tangible proof of Darwin's theory of evolution. Hailed as the First Bird, Archaeopteryx has remained the subject of heated debates for the last 140 years. Are birds actually living dinosaurs? Where does the fossil record really lead? Did flight originate from the "ground up" or "trees down"? Pat Shipman traces the age-old human desire to soar above the earth and to understand what has come before us. Taking Wing is science as adventure story, told with all the drama by which scientific understanding unfolds.

Northrop Flying Wings

Northrop Flying Wings
Author: Graham M. Simons
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2013-06-19
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 178383014X

The aviation historian and author of Memphis Belle presents an authoritative analysis of the groundbreaking, post-WWI series of military aircraft. In the years following the First World War, a new imperative arose in aviation technology: stealth, speed, and precision. American aircraft designer Jack Northrop developed a streamlined craft that did away with superfluous appendages, including the weighty fuselage and tail units. This was an extreme measure, but Northrop was determined to push aircraft design to a new level. Eliminating both the fuselage and tail meant placing the pilot, the engines, and the payload entirely within the wing envelope. The resulting craft, Northrop’s flying wings, were some of the most spectacular machines ever to grace the skies. With barely any vertical surfaces at all, they looked like something from the realm of science fiction. Indeed, one even appeared in the film version of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. Written off by many as a mere novelty, the development of these unique bombers provided aeronautical innovations that paved the way for a raft of new designs. During the 1970s, when the United States needed a new strategic bomber to replace the B-52 Superfortress, the flying wing design was brought to the fore once again. The B-2 Spirit was born out of this, continuing the legacy of this stealthy design. This craft, along with the B-35, the eight-engined YB-49 and the YRB-49A, are all highlighted in this authoritative history. Detailed analyses of each design, set within a wider historical context, make for a compelling record of this landmark design.

On the Wing

On the Wing
Author: Dr. David E. Alexander
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2015
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0199996776

"On the Wing is the first book to take a comprehensive look at the evolution of flight in all four groups of powered flyers: insects, pterosaurs, birds, and bats."--Book jacket.

Vesper Flights

Vesper Flights
Author: Helen Macdonald
Publisher: Grove Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2020-08-25
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0802146694

The New York Times–bestselling author of H is for Hawk explores the human relationship to the natural world in this “dazzling” essay collection (Wall Street Journal). In Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved essays, along with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches to her own private vespers while trying to fall asleep. Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, Helen invites us into her most intimate experiences: observing the massive migration of songbirds from the top of the Empire State Building, watching tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary, seeking the last golden orioles in Suffolk’s poplar forests. She writes with heart-tugging clarity about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds’ nests, and the unexpected guidance and comfort we find when watching wildlife.

Flying Wings

Flying Wings
Author: David Doyle
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2015-01
Genre:
ISBN: 9780989554770

How to Fly with Broken Wings

How to Fly with Broken Wings
Author: Jane Elson
Publisher: Hodder Children's Books
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2015-03-05
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1444916785

'If Finn Maison shouts jump you jump or you are dead.' Twelve-year-old Willem has two main aims in life: to fly and to make at least two friends of his own age. But all the other boys from the Beckham Estate do is make him jump off things. First his desk - and now the wall. As his toes teeter on the edge, Sasha Bradley gives him a tiny little wink. Might she become his friend? Bullied by Finn and his gang the Beckham Estate Boyz, Willem has no choice but to jump. As he flies through the air he flaps his arms, wishing he could fly and escape into the clouds. Instead he comes crashing down and breaks his ankle. Sasha, angry with herself for not stopping Finn and his Boyz, is determined to put things right. And soon, while the gangs riot on their estate, Willem and Sasha form an unlikely friendship. Because they share a secret. Sasha longs to fly too. And when Magic Man Archie arrives with stories of war-flying spitfires, he will change the lives of the kids on the Beckham Estate for ever. And perhaps find a way for Willem and Sasha to fly ... Touching on themes such as friendship and bullying, this is a charming tale about overcoming obstacles and finding friendship in unlikely places. 'heart-rending, heartbreaking and heartening' The Best New Children's Books Guardian Supplement

The Feather Thief

The Feather Thief
Author: Kirk Wallace Johnson
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2018-04-24
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1101981628

As heard on NPR's This American Life “Absorbing . . . Though it's non-fiction, The Feather Thief contains many of the elements of a classic thriller.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air “One of the most peculiar and memorable true-crime books ever.” —Christian Science Monitor A rollicking true-crime adventure and a captivating journey into an underground world of fanatical fly-tiers and plume peddlers, for readers of The Stranger in the Woods, The Lost City of Z, and The Orchid Thief. On a cool June evening in 2009, after performing a concert at London's Royal Academy of Music, twenty-year-old American flautist Edwin Rist boarded a train for a suburban outpost of the British Museum of Natural History. Home to one of the largest ornithological collections in the world, the Tring museum was full of rare bird specimens whose gorgeous feathers were worth staggering amounts of money to the men who shared Edwin's obsession: the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying. Once inside the museum, the champion fly-tier grabbed hundreds of bird skins—some collected 150 years earlier by a contemporary of Darwin's, Alfred Russel Wallace, who'd risked everything to gather them—and escaped into the darkness. Two years later, Kirk Wallace Johnson was waist high in a river in northern New Mexico when his fly-fishing guide told him about the heist. He was soon consumed by the strange case of the feather thief. What would possess a person to steal dead birds? Had Edwin paid the price for his crime? What became of the missing skins? In his search for answers, Johnson was catapulted into a years-long, worldwide investigation. The gripping story of a bizarre and shocking crime, and one man's relentless pursuit of justice, The Feather Thief is also a fascinating exploration of obsession, and man's destructive instinct to harvest the beauty of nature.