Bruce M. Beehler – författare

An enthralling exploration of the biologically richest island on Earth, featuring more than 200 spectacular color images by award-winning National Geographic photographer Tim LamanIn this beautiful book, Bruce Beehler, a renowned author and expert on New Guinea, and award-winning National Geographic photographer Tim Laman take the reader on an unforgettable journey through the natural and cultural wonders of the world''s grandest island. Skillfully combining a wealth of information, a descriptive and story-filled narrative, and more than 200 stunning color photographs, the book unlocks New Guinea''s remarkable secrets like never before.Lying between the Equator and Australia''s north coast, and surrounded by the richest coral reefs on Earth, New Guinea is the world''s largest, highest, and most environmentally complex tropical island—home to rainforests with showy rhododendrons, strange and colorful orchids, tree-kangaroos, spiny anteaters, ingenious bowerbirds, and spectacular birds of paradise. New Guinea is also home to more than a thousand traditional human societies, each with its own language and lifestyle, and many of these tribes still live in isolated villages and serve as stewards of the rainforests they inhabit.Accessible and authoritative, New Guinea provides a comprehensive introduction to the island''s environment, animals, plants, and traditional rainforest cultures. Individual chapters cover the island''s history of exploration; geology; climate and weather; biogeography; plantlife; insects, spiders, and other invertebrates; freshwater fishes; snakes, lizards, and frogs; birdlife; mammals; paleontology; paleoanthropology; cultural and linguistic diversity; surrounding islands and reefs; the pristine forest of the Foja Mountains; village life; and future sustainability.Complete with informative illustrations and a large, detailed map, New Guinea offers an enchanting account of the island''s unequalled natural and cultural treasures.

The definitive field guide to the marvelous birds of New GuineaThis is the completely revised edition of the essential field guide to the birds of New Guinea. The world''s largest tropical island, New Guinea boasts a spectacular avifauna characterized by cassowaries, megapodes, pigeons, parrots, cuckoos, kingfishers, and owlet-nightjars, as well as an exceptionally diverse assemblage of songbirds such as the iconic birds of paradise and bowerbirds. Birds of New Guinea is the only guide to cover all 780 bird species reported in the area, including 366 endemics. Expanding its coverage with 111 vibrant color plates—twice as many as the first edition—and the addition of 635 range maps, the book also contains updated species accounts with new information about identification, voice, habits, and range. A must-have for everyone from ecotourists to field researchers, Birds of New Guinea remains an indispensable guide to the diverse birds of this remarkable region.

New Guinea, the largest tropical island, supports a spectacular bird fauna characterized by cassowaries, megapodes, pigeons, parrots, kingfishers, and owlet-nightjars, as well as the iconic birds of paradise and bowerbirds. Of the nearly 800 species of birds recorded from New Guinea, more than 350 are found nowhere else on Earth. This comprehensive annotated checklist of distribution, taxonomy, and systematics of the birds of New Guinea is the first formal review of this avifauna since Ernst Mayr''s Checklist, published in 1941. This new book brings together all the systematic, taxonomic, and distributional research conducted on the region''s bird families over the last 70 years.Bruce Beehler and Thane Pratt provide the scientific foundation for the names, geographic distributions, and systematic arrangement of New Guinea''s bird fauna. All technical information is annotated and a geographic gazetteer and bibliography are included. This book is an ideal complement to the Birds of New Guinea field guide also published by Princeton, and is an essential technical reference for all scientific libraries, ornithologists, and those interested in bird classification.