Dec 18, 2009
Books: Half a Lifetime Spent in Pursuit of Waterbirds (Theodore Cross)
New York Times – Twenty years ago, Theodore Cross traveled 16 time zones, from New York to Moscow, Irkutsk and Yakutsk, and finally to the tundra of the Kolyma Delta, in northeastern Siberia, to catch a coveted glimpse of an Arctic bird, the Ross’s gull. Mr. Cross did spot one gull, but its nest was overtaken by a parasitic jaeger before he could return with his blind and his long telephoto lens. The trip was a failure. Two weeks later, the unexpected happened: a Ross’s gull showed up in Baltimore. Thousands of birders converged on the spot for the rare sighting. “They call it the bird that launched 20,000 binoculars,” Mr. Cross said. His 344-page volume, “Waterbirds” (W. W. Norton & Company), is part visual encyclopedia, part memoir of a nearly half-century pursuit of birds …
The bar-tailed godwit flies 6,800 miles each year from Alaska to New Zealand without food, water or rest in what Mr. Cross calls “one of nature’s miracles.” And the semipalmated sandpiper, small enough to fit into a teacup, migrates between South America and the Arctic, “through gales and hurricanes, over mountains and ocean.”
Publisher site: “Waterbirds” (W. W. Norton & Company).
More information:
- All Things Considered (NPR): “A Pursuit Of ‘Waterbirds’ Concludes A Variegated Life” (March 01, 2010).
- All Things Considered (NPR): “For Photographer Of Birds, A Spotlight On Beauty” (Dec. 15, 2009). Click on link for podcast, or listen below.
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