ON THE WIRE

BOOK

100 Flying Birds: Photographing the Mechanics of Flight

By Peter Cavanagh, Firefly Books, 2021, hardover, 320 pages, $49.95.

Wildlife photographer Peter Cavanagh has been taking pictures since he was a boy in England. In this new book, he displays his love of birds and his talent with the camera. After all, flight photography is perhaps the most challenging of bird-photography tasks, but Cavanagh does not fail to impress.

For instance, readers will view a White-tailed Eagle plummeting through a Japanese sky, a Brown Pelican striking a silhouette against an Ecuadorian sunset, an Atlantic Puffin carrying its fish dinner above the Scottish coast, and a Keel-billed Toucan gliding through a Costa Rican jungle canopy.

The 11 chapters focus on the following groups of images: eagles; hummingbirds; gulls and terns; small waterbirds; large waterbirds; ducks, geese, and swans; raptors;