I was a nature nut pretty much right out of the womb. And I had been campaigning pretty hard as a kid to - for my parents to take me to Hawk Mountain. And it's this high, windswept ridge along the Appalachian Ridge-and-Valley system, and along which every fall, tens of thousands of hawks and eagles and falcons and vultures migrate south.
And not all that far from where I grew up is a place called Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, which is the world's oldest sanctuary for birds of prey. That's where I've lived almost my entire life. I grew up in the mountains of eastern Pennsylvania. You know, you've been doing this for so many decades, but you write in this book that your fascination with birds really goes back to a pivotal moment when you were 12 years old. I spoke to him in March of last year, when "A World On The Wing" was first published.ĭAVIES: Scott Weidensaul, welcome back to FRESH AIR. He co-founded Project SNOWstorm, which tracks and studies snowy owls and is a founder of the Critical Connections project, which is tracking the migration of birds that breed on national park lands in Alaska. Scott Weidensaul has written 30 previous books, and his articles have appeared in Audubon, National Wildlife and other publications.
One study found that since 1970, roughly 30% of North American birds have disappeared, more than 3 billion of them. Weidensaul writes about what he calls this majestic global pageant and about the threats the animals face.
Weidensaul's latest book, "A World On The Wing: The Global Odyssey Of Migratory Birds," is now out in paperback. The scale of bird migration is staggering, involving billions of birds, and the diversity of the species' mating, nesting and flying habits is awe inspiring. He's spent decades studying migratory birds, reporting on and writing about them and doing fieldwork and tracking and conservation efforts. Did you know that when some migratory birds prepare for flights that can take them thousands of miles, their intestines and digestive organs shrink while their heart, lung and leg muscles can double in size? That's just one of the amazing facts you can learn from our guest, Scott Weidensaul. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross, who's off this week.
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