One of the world's largest and richest estuaries, the Chesapeake Bay attracts millions of birds to its marshes and waterways. For thirty years, the artist John Taylor has lived and worked along its shores - walking the woods and beaches, looking for birds, and recording the extraordinary life of the Chesapeake in his paintings, drawings, and journals.Birds of the Chesapeake Bay collects forty of Taylor's recent paintings. Beautifully reproduced in full-color, they depict many of the Chesapeake's most important and best-loved birds. Some of his subjects - the Canada goose, laughing gull, and osprey - are familiar sights to those who live near the Bay. Others - the snowy egret, sora rail, and peregrine falcon - are more rarely seen. All are rendered with exceptional attention to physical detail and subtlety of form, whether treated in portraits or landscapes.Here is a unique look at the Bay's wildlife and habitat through the eyes of a talented artist and experienced naturalist. Accompanying each painting is an account of the bird's natural history, including details of its life in the Chesapeake region and how that life has changed because of increasing development and more energetic conservation efforts. Excerpts from Taylor's field journals offer vivid accounts of the Bay's sights and sounds - describing the elaborate greeting ceremony of the tundra swan or the haunting voice of a courting oldsquaw.At a time when the need to treasure the Chesapeake has never been clearer or more urgent, the art of John Taylor - able to inspire as well as educate - heightens our awareness of the Bay as both an extraordinary resource and a place of incomparable beauty. Read Less