Product Description

There are more crows now than ever. Their abundance is both an indicator of ecological imbalance and a generous opportunity to connect with the animal world. CROWPLANETreminds us that we do not need to head to faraway places to encounter "nature." Rather, even in the suburbs and cities where we live we are surrounded by wild life such as crows, and through observing them we can enhance our appreciation of the world's natural order. CROW PLANET richly weaves Haupt's own "crow stories" as well as scientific and scholarly research and the history and mythology of crows, culminating in a book that is sure to make readers see the world around them in a very different way.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5944 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780316019101
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Haupt, former raptor rehabilitator and seabird researcher, embarks on an urban ornithological expedition to defend the honor of the crow, the ubiquitous bird whose corvid family precedes Homo sapiens by several million years and whose symbolic and actual role as a scavenger and œliaison between life and death evokes reactions ranging from revulsion to awe. Attracted to the sight of the birds nesting in her backyard, the author follows them as they forage in the moss along neighborhood streets and cavort in a nearby wildlife preserve. Her forays into Seattle's œtenacious wild demonstrate evidence of the crow community's social complexity, their extensive vocabulary and fierce loyalty to their mates and species, Haupt enlivens her observations with tidbits from crow mythology and history, discovering that their bad press dates to the 14th-century outbreak of the bubonic plague when the birds scavenged the dead bodies lying in the streets, œbeginning, horribly, with the eyeballs. Despite some awkward prose, Haupt succeeds in humanizing the object of her naturalist obsession and affection. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"Haupt writes gracefully about the interactions between crows and humans in the urban landscape and what those interactions portend for the future of the zoöpolis. A fresh take on conscious living in the everyday world." (Kirkus Reviews )

"If you picture Henry David Thoreau as a young mother and scientist in suburban Seattle, you can begin to imagine the literate elegance of Crow Planet. Lyanda Haupt has spun the natural life of neighborhoods, and most poignantly the surpassing intelligence of crows, into the kind of gold only the most gifted writer and naturalist could fashion. Crow Planet is a small treasure, a conversion experience of truth, wit, and re-enchantment that remakes the world and our place within it."--Paul Hawken, author of Blessed Unrest and Natural Capitalism

"Haupt captures crows wonderfully in elegant prose and weaves a thoughtful tale that connects them from St. Benedict's philosophy of lecti divina of 480 CE to our growing awareness of our kinship to, and dependence on, the rest of life."--Bernd Heinrich, author of Mind of the Raven

"Lyanda Haupt observes crows with a naturalist's eye and discovers that they are smart, social, and disturbingly like us...Your strolls around your neighborhood will be much more interesting after you read this book."--Denis Hayes, national coordinator for the first Earth Day and President and CEO of the Bullitt Foundation

"The fiction (sometimes the hope!) that you can escape from nature by living in the city is as sad as it is widespread. This book will remind you to open your eyes to the mundane--it will make the city a far richer place for you."--Bill McKibben, author of The Bill McKibben Reader

"Crow Planet gently confronts us with the desperate need for mindfulness as we go about our daily lives in the urban wilderness so that evolution may continue and we may stem the loss of our humanity."--Maggie Ross, author of The Fire of Your Life: A Solitude Shared

"Haupt creates an amalgam of ornithology, mythology, philosophy, and advice on how to engage with­--and some warnings about our effects on­--nature; the result is an engaging book-long essay on the interconnectedness of life."--Irene Pepperberg, Ph.D., author of Alex and Me

"Haupt enlivens her observations with tidbits from crow mythology and history [and] succeeds in humanizing the object of her naturalist obsession and affection."--Publishers Weekly



"A delightful meditation on our role in the natural world...[Haupt] provides a rich context for exploring the relationship between humans and nature."-Library Journal, Starred review

"If you live in a city and want to expand your awareness of the natural world, CROW PLANET would be a compelling and inspirational book. If you love or hate or are mystified by crows, it is an essential one."-The Oregonian

"With her sensitivity, careful eye and gift for language, Haupt tells her tale beautifully...immersing us in a heady hybrid of science, history, how-to and memoir."-Los Angeles Times

"A personal book, one that uses [Haupt] and her fondness for crows to cast its interests toward large concepts such as conservation, the environment, and learning to live more thoughtfully."-Seattle Times

About the Author
Lyanda Lynn Haupt has created and directed educational programs for Seattle Audubon, worked in raptor rehabilitation in Vermont, and as a seabird researcher for the Fish and Wildlife Service in the remote tropical Pacific. She is the author of Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent and Rare Encounters with Ordinary Birds (winner of the 2002 Washington State Book Award). Her writing has appeared in Image, Open Spaces, Wild Earth, Conservation Biology Journal, Birdwatcher's Digest, and the Prairie Naturalist. She lives in West Seattle with her husband and daughter.

Customer Reviews

Corvoid insights
We spent a few days in Seattle recently, and one of the joys of my travel is to read local authors to get a personal flavor for the locality. I enjoyed reading Lyanda Haupt's Rare Encounters with Ordinary Birds several years ago, and have been following her blog for a few weeks in anticipation of our trip.

The blog, "The Tangled Nest" celebrates the "new home economics --an essential twining of home, garden, food, craft, and co-existence with the wild, natural world."

Her newest book presents a multi-leved look at the common crow. At one level, she describes crows watching her plant her peas, and then realizing a few hours later that they were probably scoping out their next meal. Sure enough, the next morning a number of pea sized holes appeared in her garden, and she draws a deep lesson from her loss:

"I don't have any brilliant how-tos for preventing crows from eating your peas. But I love the reminder that there is no clear line we can draw between our households, our lives, our habits, and the wider, natural world. Our homey thresholds are flimsy and marginal - they represent the point from which we cross into nature, and wild nature - distressingly sometimes - crosses back. Such a recognition of our constant, inevitable continuity with the more-than-human world is, I believe, exhilarating, enlivening, and beautiful. Meanwhile, we protect our chickens, net our strawberries, and wave our arms at waiting crows. I tossed some new pea seeds into the holes the crows had made, and they're beginning to fill in nicely."

At another level, she draws a chilling lesson of our human impact on the natural world. "Because crows are so urban and abundant (there are more crows now than any other time in history), when they become representatives of wilderness we begin to discover wilderness everywhere."

Haupt is a keen observer and she shares her research and many stories about crows and their relationships with humans. Her enthusiasms for these ordinary birds mirror those of a New England farmer 150 years ago.

"There is no other bird that suffers such general persecution. In no kingdom or province is he protected either by custom or superstition, and there is no peace for him in any part of the earth where man resides. Remembering the mischief he does by plundering a few grains of corn in the sowing season, and forgetting the benefits he confers by the destruction of myriads of noxious insects, the farmer looks upon him as the enemy of his crops, and destroys his species by every means which he can invent ; as an excuse for this atrocity he is accused of all sorts of unamiable and wicked propensities. He is abused for his cunning, his stealth, his mischievousness and his habits of thieving. But his stealings might justly be regarded as the perquisites attached to his office as scavenger and destroyer of vermin. His cunning is the natural result of the machinations made against him on all sides, and the traps that are constantly set for his destruction. Wilson Flogg, "New England Farmer", 1856.

At times, she personalizes perhaps a bit too much. For example, she writes that a crow trying to eat a bat means to aid her "biological education", and elsewhere that "in their bold visibility, crows show me what I don't see." She's too keen an observer not to report on her own behavior; "I cannot help projecting, wondering whether any female crows have little corvid nervous breakdowns. ..."

Despite these minor irritants, this is a very useful introduction to a bird whose populations are growing, perhaps as fast as human populations. We saw a dozen along the tracks at the South Portal as we neared Seattle. Haupt's book made their behavior more interesting and meaningful. I'm happy that she is continuing to write in her blog about the interaction of humans and nature.

Robert C. Ross 2009

Everyone has a crow story
Haupt has written a much needed book for today's busy lifestyle. We all hear about nature and how we need to respect it, but often we don't know how, or even where to begin. Haupt tackles this problem by simply focusing on one animal, the crow. It's a bird common to most people and easy to spot, unlike most songbirds that stay in the trees and are hard to study. Crows are out in the open and, being members of the corvid family, are intelligent and lively. Crows and other corvids are problem-solvers; they enjoy manipulating items and seem to think about what they are doing.

Haupt uses the crow as a communication tool to open the reader to the world of nature and observation. The book is filled with interesting stories about crows, and is solid with information on crow behavior, ecology, and general biology. Haupt has done her homework, not just on crow ecology, but also how to relate this ecology to philosophy and everyday thinking about global issues. In the book we see the journey crows take between life and death, and how we should relate to these concepts in our own lives.

Haupt brings up a topic about which I have strong feelings. There seems to be a void in the lives of our children regarding nature. It seems that young folk would rather stay indoors and fi ddle with electronic devices than venture outside and poke around in shrubbery and trees or lift rocks to discover the small worlds within. My daughter is two years old and is allowed, under supervision of course, to freely explore nature. As we pull weeds in the back yard, or work in the garden, she observes insects and toads, and I teach her that these things are alive and interesting. With this sort of exposure at a young age, I hope she will grow up to be an optimistic steward of the planet, doing her part to give nature the respect it deserves.

Haupt concludes with a meaningful thought. Instead of being wholeheartedly melancholy over the ecological state of the earth, she chose to dwell in possibility, as Emily Dickinson suggested, "...we cannot predict what will happen but we make space for it ... and realize that our participation has value." Haupt explains that this is grown-up optimism, "where our bondedness with the rest of creation, a sense of profound interaction, and a belief in our shared ingenuity give meaning to our lives and actions on behalf of the more-than-human world."

Inspire your inner Urban Naturalist
An inspired choice for any bird lover or reading group, Crow Planet is the author's personal journey to better understand nature in the urban landscape in which we live. Her work is a conversation with the reader pondering questions like: What is nature? How do we effect it and it us? And how can we better understand the ecology of the neighborhood surrounding us?

Crows are the gateway into her growth as an Urban Naturalist and we are invited along to wonder at their intelligence and adaptability.

There is a breezy style to Haupt's prose that is thought provoking, wistful, comforting; like reminiscing with an old friend late into the night. In Crow Planet Haupt is equal parts Environmentalist, Biographer and Naturalist, inspiring us to discover more about our own corner of the world. A Great Read!