Reddit mentions: The best forests & rainforests guides

I just realized no one has asked you where you live! All these answers are pretty much North America centric as I am assuming that is where you live.

Everyone has mentioned Sibley (who is pretty much my idol) but there a couple other books that might be interesting to you as well. I would definitely recommend his field guide over his full guide for you.

• The Birder's Handbook is an interesting browse-y sort of read; it has both essays and species info in it. There are so many interesting tidbits to pick up in there.
  
  
• Hope is the Thing with Feathers by Christopher Cokonis is a very interesting and sad read about recently extinct bird species of North America. It is somewhat painful to read--as a birder--because you will never be able to see any of those species in the field but it is a wonderful look at how we both see and have seen birds.
  
  
• Nat Geo's Birding Essentials is a good place to sort of "learn the language" of birding. I don't like their field guides as much as I like Sibley's but this book is quite good at covering a range of birding subjects for the beginner.
  
  Another good idea would be getting a hold of regional field guide or an American Bird Association (ABA) list for your area. It would help you to narrow down the species you are likely to be looking at. Using a field guide full of incidentals/rare/crosses/sub-species can be confusing for a new birder so a smaller list can help you pinpoint which species you should be flipping through your book to look at. You can often find these lists at state and county parks. Your state/local DNR site is a great place to find birding resources in your area!
  
  My favorite bird is the Ovenbird! They are fat and stripey and seriously loud for being sort of cagey undergrowth dwellers. I often log them on my bird lists without ever seeing one because their loud calls are unmistakable (and often unending). They aren't impressive or majestic but they are pretty cute with their stripey orange mohawks.
  

If anyone is interested, they included a 20"x32" foldout of this map (along with an awesome diagram of the partial universe on the back) in the October 1999 edition (vol. 196, no. 4) of the Nat Geo magazine. If you want an awesome poster for your room, they are selling a few copies on Amazon for only a couple of dollars.

I found a copy yesterday at my local art recycling center (by pure coincidence), and the foldout is hanging on my wall right now!

There is a national geographic magazine from when they located it in the 80s that you may be able to find the back issue. I remember being thrilled with it as a kid when I found it in the library. It is here https://www.amazon.com/National-Geographic-Magazine-December-1985/dp/B002B50EVW

Years ago I read a book that describes the five minute drama of a sloth in near panic fleeing. A sloth can move at up to 4m (13ft) per minute, but it takes a lot of energy. So, sloths don't have what we would call a burst of speed.

Sloths move slowly for several reasons:

• They don't have a lot of muscle. ~25% of body weight as opposed to ~45% for most other mammals.
  
  
• The primarily have retractor muscles (for hanging or pulling things towards themselves), so their ability to extend limbs is even worse. Many of the extensor muscles found in other mammals are modified to retractors in sloths.
  
  
• Their muscles contract more slowly. Cat muscles can contract in 20ms, while sloth muscles take over 100ms.. The muscle changes might be a way to conserve energy, or be related to the sloths' temperature tolerance. 74°F - 92°F
  
  
• [The central nervous system also appears to play a role, since the muscle differences alone don't explain all of the speed differences]
  (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cne.901490209/abstract?systemMessage=Wiley+Online+Library+will+be+disrupted+3+Dec+from+10-12+GMT+for+monthly+maintenance), but this isn't well understood.
  

National Geographic issue he is showing.

You can own a copy of the map. (I'm not sure what you mean by "large".)

There are also similar National Geographic maps of the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and the Arctic Ocean.

And there is one of the whole world.