Excerpt from Bird Banding, the Telltale of Migratory Flight: A Modern Method of Learning the Flight-Ways and Habits of Birds Gulls perform very real services as scavengers, keeping many a beach clear of dead fish and other refuse. They wander far up our rivers and even breed in large numbers on the lakes Of the interior. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

How and why birds navigate the skies, travelling from continent to continent — flying thousands of miles across the earth each autumn and spring — has continually fascinated the human imagination, but only recently have we been able to fully understand these amazing journeys. How did this revolution come about? Flight Paths is the never-before-told story of how an eccentric group of ornithologists, engineers and other pioneering scientists have harnessed nearly every technological development of the last hundred years to understand bird migration in detail - from where and when they take off, their flight paths and behaviours, their destinations and the challenges they face getting there. In this fascinating and compelling story Rebecca Heisman uncovers the secret history of an ornithological arms race that not only helped solve the mystery of bird migration using radar, radioactive isotopes, satellites and the humble aluminium band but has also given us much needed insight into how best to protect and conserve the bird life we cherish.