By Bert Gambini, WBFO
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wbfo/local-wbfo-629478.mp3
Buffalo, NY – Scott Weidensaul, author of Of A Feather: A Brief History of American Birding
Tuesday, September 18th at 7 p.m.
Allen Hall Theatre, UB South Campus
From the moment Europeans arrived in North America, they were awestruck by a continent awash with birds great flocks of wild pigeons, prairies teeming with grouse, woodlands alive with brilliantly colored songbirds. Of a Feather traces the colorful origins of American birding: the frontier ornithologists who collected eggs between border skirmishes; the society matrons who organized the first effective conservation movement; and the luminaries with checkered pasts, such as Alexander Wilson (a convicted blackmailer) and the endlessly self-mythologizing John James Audubon. Scott Weidensaul also recounts the explosive growth of modern birding that began when an awkward schoolteacher named Roger Tory Peterson published A Field Guide to the Birds in 1934. Today birding counts iPod-wearing teens and obsessive listers among its tens of millions of participants, making what was once an eccentric hobby into something so completely mainstream it's now (almost) cool.
Click the "listen" icon above to hear Meet the Author now, or use your podcasting software to download it to your computer or iPod.