Following on from the last post, I give you news of the publication of the book on golden eagles that Adam Watson and I wrote and finalised at the end of last year. Unfortunately Adam never saw the final product which was being printed when he died. Below is a brief note on the book's page in the Hancock House Publishers website.
OBSERVATIONS OF GOLDEN EAGLES IN SCOTLAND: A HISTORICAL AND ECOLOGICAL REVIEW
Newly Released!
Hancock House is saddened by the loss of one of Scotland's greatest conservationists- Dr. Adam Watson, but proud to have helped produced his last published work. We have provided some obituaries highlighting some of his lifetime achievements below.
Follow this link to Hancock House publishers to see the obituaries and further information on the book.
The book draws upon data collected on golden eagles by Adam since 1943, myself since the 1970s and Derek Spencer in recent years. There is a long history of studying golden eagles in Scotland since the pioneering work of Seton Gordon in the late 1800s. And in this book we brought together long-held unpublished information on golden eagles in north-east and north-west Scotland. The aim was to collate our combined knowledge of golden eagles, share that knowledge with others, and interpret our findings with a broad comprehension of how golden eagles have fared, are faring and will probably fare in the future in Scotland.
This book is in a way an archive of information on golden eagles as we pulled lots of data and historical details from our notebooks. It would have been difficult to have much of the contents accepted by modern scientific journals or even popular magazines. For many of the former have become heavy reading and much of the latter have become very light reading. Much of our text lies in between.
We added about a hundred photographs to illustrate the history of eagle study in Scotland and current work being done. And we thank all those helpers and people who contributed data and photographs to the book.
We both found the foreword, of which the last sentences are copied below, very encouraging if a bit awkward to our Scottish demureness. Me, I am grateful to Adam for the shared trials, discussions and joys while putting the book together.
Foreword:
`............This book deserves rich accolades for the massive, persistent effort of the authors and their colleagues. In the annals of single species studies of raptors there is no comparable project, and no comparable volume, to what Adam Watson and Stuart Rae present here.'
David H. Ellis and Des B.A. Thompson.
P.S. The hardcover edition is nicer.
