Opening July 4, 1969, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, The Red Bird All-Indian Traveling Band follows a country western band through a summer of gigs in this novel that is equal parts mystery and community chronicle. At its core is the band's sassy lead singer and guitarist, Sissy Roberts, who must unravel a mysterious death as well as her own future in this story set in Indian Country on the verge of historic changes.

Rock Pigeon struts down the street, bopping his head to the music's beat. He's looking for some feathered friends to join his musical band. Discover the characteristics of pigeons, eagles, and all types of birds in this fun song paired with beautiful illustrations. This hardcover book comes with CD and online music access.

Rock Pigeon struts down the street, bopping his head to the music's beat. He's looking for some feathered friends to join his musical band. Discover the characteristics of pigeons, eagles, and all types of birds in this fun song paired with beautiful illustrations. This hardcover book comes with CD and online music access.

"A longtime hunter in the coastal range of Oregon takes stock of his favorite prey, the band-tailed pigeon," reported "The New York Times in the summer of 2003. What made Worth Mathewson's writing about the western wilderness pigeon newsworthy is not his elegant evocation of the damp, spicy scent of a Pacific Northwest river valley before dawn or his keen observations of bandtails flying high and fast over a canyon, then folding their wings to drop into trees like gray darts. Rather the press took note of an avid hunter blaming overhunting and bad management for the devastation of a species. Wary by nature yet brave under fire, the magnificent bandtail has long thrilled the sportsman. Some attribute the bird's decline to habitat loss, but Mathewson, in this complete natural history, carefully builds his case to the contrary. While trichomoniasis and spraying of broadleaf trees may contribute, the human factor is paramount: a persistently callous attitude toward "Patagioenas fasciata may keep it in a downward spiral. If modest protections are lifted at the first signs of recovery, its fate may be sealed. "Nonhunters will likely be puzzled, perhaps irritated, by statements that some hunters love the quarry they kill," Mathewson writes. "But that is fact." With drawings by noted wildlife artist David Hagerbaumer, color photographs by the author and Margaret Thompson Mathewson, and an extensive bibliography, this finely rendered, affecting portrait of a wild bird with a troubled past is nothing short of a call to action.

Bird banding properly done is neither cruel nor in any other way harmful. The weight of the bits of aluminum or copper from which the bands are made does not burden the birds, and if the bands are correctly placed there is slight danger of their becoming caught on twigs, thorns, or nesting material.