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Title details for A Supremely Bad Idea by Luke Dempsey - Available

A Supremely Bad Idea

Three Mad Birders and Their Quest to See It All

by Luke Dempsey
ebook
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1 of 1 copy available
It began with a weekend house; then weekend trips. Then the occasional meeting rearranged in favor of a morning in Central Park, just while the spring migration was on. Before Luke Dempsey knew it, he had spiraled down into full-on birding mania - finding himself riding along with two like-minded maniacs in a series of disreputable rental cars and even nastier motel rooms, charging madly around the country in search of its rarest and most beautiful birds.
A Supremely Bad Idea is the story of that search, and those birds, and those maniacs, and that country, and (to a much lesser extent) those rental cars. In Texas, the three obsessives go in search of the deeply endangered Golden-cheeked Warbler, which lives on the side of a hill near a waterfall; in Michigan, they see the pretty-much-extinct Kirtland's Warbler, which insists on short pine trees for nesting and lots of "quiet, please"; in Arizona, they see the very private Elegant Trogon after a very public fight with a birding guide. Along the way, Dempsey narrates an amazing sequence of encounters with nature and humanity, including a man building a 40-foot ark in his Seattle backyard; a beautiful woman who shows him how to kill 4,000 Cowbirds a year; a coyote (and his human smuggler) on the Rio Grande; and everywhere, these incandescent birds flitting across the range of his binoculars, and his heart.
With the casual erudition of a Bill Bryson and the comic timing of a British David Sedaris, Dempsey demonstrates why so many millions of birders care so much about birds - and why, perhaps, the rest of us should, too.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    January 15, 2011

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781608196685

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781608196685
      • File size: 3049 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 19, 2008
      In this uneven debut, Dempsey details his bird-watching misadventures as he and two friends quest after America's rarest birds. The hapless trio try to defend osprey in Florida, pacify Texan smugglers, unwittingly set up a spotting scope in the middle of a busy road, lug around (and forget) a cooler of fancy cheeses on a trip through Arizona. Although amusing, the series of pratfalls blunt and obscure Dempsey's more pointed observations on why birders are so passionate about the pursuit and the urgency bird watching takes on in the face of habitat destruction. When the author writes passionately about pine beetle damage in Colorado or permits readers access to a triumphant glimpse of a cerulean warbler, the episodes cease reading like vacation-slide narrative and approach an affecting honesty with comments such as this one (prompted by a rain-swept outing in Washington State): “Once again, birding had loaned me a calmness that seemed to push me apart from the concerns of the world.”

    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 21, 2008
      In this uneven debut, Dempsey details his bird-watching misadventures as he and two friends quest after America's rarest birds. The hapless trio try to defend osprey in Florida, pacify Texan smugglers, unwittingly set up a spotting scope in the middle of a busy road, lug around (and forget) a cooler of fancy cheeses on a trip through Arizona. Although amusing, the series of pratfalls blunt and obscure Dempsey's more pointed observations on why birders are so passionate about the pursuit and the urgency bird watching takes on in the face of habitat destruction. When the author writes passionately about pine beetle damage in Colorado or permits readers access to a triumphant glimpse of a cerulean warbler, the episodes cease reading like vacation-slide narrative and approach an affecting honesty with comments such as this one (prompted by a rain-swept outing in Washington State): \x93Once again, birding had loaned me a calmness that seemed to push me apart from the concerns of the world.\x94

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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