(the rest of the subtitle says: From Flying to Nesting, Eating to Singing) This book doesn’t really get into the mind of birds, like the title might lead you to believe. For that, read something like The Genius of Birds or Bird Brain. Instead, it’s a book full of beautifully clear illustrations and facts about birds- their physiology, mating behavior, nest building, migration strategies and so on. As some other readers have pointed out, the organization is a bit strange, and it’s not really meant to be read straight through cover to cover, but that’s what I did and I actually enjoyed it. Sometimes I just want to sink into a bunch of facts about animals. This one was an easy read, and plenty interesting.
The first section has a lot of general information about physical attributes and behavior particular to birds. Main part of the book is double spreads on individual species or closely related species- some of these pages highlight facts specifically about those birds, most however use the single bird to give an example of details that could apply to any bird. So I was kind of starting to wonder why it didn’t mention things I think are important to know about particular birds, like that european starlings are considered invasive and outcompete native birds in our country (some people hate them for it). But then at the end you get to a spread of pages that lists all the birds mentioned in the book, and gives more details on them in particular. Eh.
So what did I learn? Well, a lot of it was review for me, honestly. Still enjoyable. Loved the illustrations. I tried hard to understand the stuff about how feather structure causes the brilliant colors we see in birds, but even though it seemed to be clearly explained, I couldn’t quite grasp it. The info about how birds navigate and how they produce two sounds at once, that was easier to get. I was surprised and curious to learn that coots (which my brain lumps with grebes) are more closely related to cranes than to ducks, and that grebes themselves are most closely related to flamingos! Did you know that while adult gulls will readily eat human trash, they don’t take that back to their offspring, but feed the chicks only nutritious food like fresh fish. Cedar waxwings have yellow-tipped tail feathers, the color comes from a chemical in fruits they eat. But if they eat berries from alien asian honeysuckle, which has a different chemical that influences color, their tail edges turn orange. (I think I read this in another book before). Also, a fact I may have vaguely been aware of before but it was never really pointed out to me: birds that have strong sexual dimorphism, with males brightly colored and females simple or dull colors, are usually migratory birds. The males arrive first on territory in spring, compete with other males, and then have to show off to the females to win a mate. So the females select for prettiest males (or most impressive songs) and they just get more beautiful every year. In many of those species, the male leaves after mating and the female raises the offspring alone. In contrast, birds that stay in the same place all year, the males and females look the same, and also share the parenting duties pretty equally. Interesting. I feel like I have to think about this more, there might be more implied there.
Borrowed from the public library.
