Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness
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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. The Barnes & Noble Review In the mid-1960s, a woman purporting to be merely an observant stay-at-home mom, living in a West Village brownstone, wrote a tract about ways that neighborhoods of small parks and low brownstone row-houses craft livable cities. She explained that mixtures of middle-density housing and small parks could weave vital and safe communities together for the public good. She wrote about how the simple act of having one's eyes on the street (or ears, too, if one happens to be tucked up on the third floor) made safe. tolerant communities where people could walk and play and eat and grow old. She argued that -- contrary to certain then-fashionable urban-planning doctrines -- these porous, low-slung brownstone districts fostered healthier streets and public life than high-rises that ignored the streets entirely. Only seeming "domestic," her book was actually call to physical engagement, and a landmark for architects, planners, sociologists, and anyone interested in the civic sphere. The woman was Jane Jacobs. Her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, was a landmark for architects, planners, sociologists, and anyone interested in the civic sphere. Fifty-odd years later, on the other side of the continent, Lyanda Lynn Haupt, trained as a birder and biologist, now also something of a stay-at-home mom, has launched a different domestic experiment -- one that, no less than Jacobs's, asks her to keep her "eyes on the street." For several years, Haupt, an ardent birdwatcher and naturalist in West Seattle, carefully studied her nearest avian neighbor: the crow.
