I'm not a birder but of course I love hummingbirds (who doesn't?). I appreciated the author's quest to see these beauties wherever they occur but was saddened by his observations of factors leading to the decline of many species.

He did a nice job of integrating historical and cultural backgrounds of the places he traveled, and this was perhaps more interesting to me than the actual bird content.

I intend to number and cross-reference the photo plates. Wish the publisher had done that. ( )

Canada is home to such a limited number of hummingbirds, so the variety portrayed in this book is simply stunning - the diversity of colours and sizes, the elaborate headdress on the Rufous-crested Coquette, the fancy "earrings" on the Sparkling Violetear, and the amazing tail on the Marvellous Spatuletail have to be seen to be believed. And then there's the beak almost as long as the body on the Sword-billed Hummingbird. These are feisty little birds with a very long history. Dunn delves into the mythology and the commerce surrounding hummingbirds to provide a rounded picture of these birds place in our universe.

This is not about hummingbirds. It's about making lists of hummingbirds. He sees them but doesn't really watch them. I got about halfway through before giving up. ( )

Love Letter To Hummingbirds. This is a travel/ bird spotting book following the author's adventures as he seeks to see as many hummingbirds as possible in their natural (ish) settings, from pole to pole. The narrative structure follows the author as he starts in Alaska chasing down a particular bird that was reportedly seen there - that had been originally tagged in Tallahassee, Florida. A bird that weighs just a few ounces, making a flight that many of its far larger brethren would never imagine. We continue to follow the hummingbirds into the US, spending a fair amount of time in Arizona and Mexico, and we continue all the way down to Tiego Del Fuego - the bottom of the world (as far as hummingbirds go, where here they share their habitat with penguins!). Part ornithological expedition, part history, part current events commentary, this is a solidly written - if a bit esoteric - book perfect for bird watchers and related enthusiasts. Even as a generic travel book, this still works well as Dunn so completely describes the environs he finds himself in - including an up close and personal encounter with a puma! Very well done, and very much recommended. ( )

One of a number of birding books that I've read recently, and not one of the best. The personal part of the story is just not told very well. Too often it is about Dunn visiting in the wrong season, or about time limits based on flight reservations. Perhaps these technical difficulties would have fit better in a "big hummingbird year" book, but the story is not arranged around such a narrative, so the time limits just seem intrusive, out of place. Dunn's attitude toward species that are going extinct is also problematic, for me. He's a tourist, here to get his photos—and he doesn't get involved beyond that.

>A quarter of a hummingbird’s bodyweight was accounted for by the pectoral muscles that drove its wings. Those wings could beat between fifty and two hundred times per second, reduced to a mere blur to the human eye. Sustaining such flight required a hummingbird to consume some four thousand calories per hour, powering a heart that beats around twelve hundred times per minute

> H82779, the female Rufous Hummingbird who bore the tiny metal ring on her leg that Florida hummingbird ringer Fred Dietrich placed upon her in Tallahassee on January 13, 2010. Five months later, on June 28, H82779 found herself in the careful hands of Kate in Chenega Bay, Alaska, some 3,500 miles from where human eyes had last set sight of her. By any avian standards, a 3,500-mile migration is an epic undertaking—but for a bird that weighs at best 3.5 grams, less than a penny coin, it’s nothing short of miraculous.

> Defoe certainly met with Rogers, if not Selkirk himself and, in 1719, inspired by Selkirk’s story, he anonymously published The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, a story set in the Caribbean but rooted firmly in Selkirk’s Pacific experiences ( )