Gerrit Vyn

Long-tailed jaeger

Gerrit Vyn

Great horned owls

For 100 years, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has worked to improve understanding and protection of birds. A new coffee table book from the lab, “The Living Bird: 100 Years of Listening to Nature” (Mountaineers Books), published Oct. 15, celebrates its centennial year with essays and photographs that capture the relationship between birds and people in essays by Barbara Kingsolver, Jared Diamond, John W. Fitzpatrick, Lyanda Lynn Haupt and Scott Weidensaul.

Award-winning photographer Gerrit Vyn took the photos that bring out the color, beauty and behaviors of birds on every page. The book features 250 images of more than 100 North American bird species, from migratory whooping cranes to spoon-billed sandpipers to gyrfalcons and greater prairie-chickens.

The book begins with a foreword by novelist Kingsolver on her father’s avid interest in birds and her own initially mixed interest. Fitzpatrick, the lab’s director, offers an introduction and a section on threats facing birds today. Weidensaul, a naturalist, researcher and author, writes about the secret lives of birds, including explorations into the mysteries of bird migrations, mating, plumage and songs. Naturalist and eco-philosopher Haupt comments on how common birds inspire her and the ways that citizen-science has informed her life. Finally, Diamond, author of the best-seller “Guns, Germs and Steel,” for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, looks ahead in the afterword by pointing to the need for people to take responsibility to preserve the birds around us.

Vyn

The book is illustrated by Vyn’s photography, which appears throughout. A photographer, cinematographer and producer for the Cornell lab, his photographs also have been published by National Geographic, Audubon and The New York Times.

“The Living Bird” was made possible by the Kiplinger Foundation and Austin Kiplinger ’39.

Vyn will discuss the book's major themes and share many of his powerful images and video recordings from the field at a seminar Nov. 2 at 7:30 p.m. at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca.