"Three years ago, headlines delivered shocking news: nearly three billion birds in North America have vanished over the past fifty years. No species has been spared, from the most delicate jeweled hummingbirds to scrappy black crows, from a rainbow of warblers to common birds such as owls and sparrows. For the past year, veteran journalists Anders and Beverly Gyllenhaal traveled more than 25,000 miles across the Americas, chronicling costly experiments,...

"In this volume, new human disease pandemics, arising from animals stimulated by ongoing environmental change, demonstrate the value of ornithological research into avian diseases. A group of 29 researchers address a diverse set of topics, including the evolutionary and ecological aspects of the host-vector systems, the effects of genetic variation, introduction success and vector ecology, evolution of resistance and virulence of pathogens, and the...

"In the face of rapidly declining bird populations, read about the vast impacts birds have on ecosystems, food systems, and our mental health and what we can do to protect them"-- Birds are nature's essential workers, crucial members of ecosystems around the world. And they are disappearing. Since 1970, nearly 30 percent of all birds in the United States and Canada have vanished, due to city lights and tall glass skyscrapers; domesticated cats prowling...