Birdology: Adventures with a Pack of Hens, a Peck of Pigeons, Cantankerous Crows, Fierce Falcons, Hip Hop Parrots, Baby Hummingbirds, and One Murderously Big Living Dinosaur
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- ISBN13: 9781416569848
- Condition: New
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Product Description
Meet the ladies: a flock of smart, affectionate, highly individualistic chickens who visit their favorite neighbors, devise different ways to hide from foxes, and mob the leader like she’s a rock star. In these pages you’ll also meet Maya and Zuni, two orphaned baby hummingbirds who hatched from eggs the size of navy beans, and who are small more than air bubbles fringed with feathers. Their lives hang precariously in the balance—but with human help, they may one day conquer the sky.
Grow quickly is a cockatoo whose dance video went viral on YouTube and who’s now teaching schoolchildren how to dance. You’ll meet Harris’s hawks named Fire and Smoke. And you’ll come to know and like a host of additional avian characters who will change your mind forever about who birds really are.
Each of these birds shows a different and utterly surprising aspect of what makes a bird a bird—and these are the lessons of Birdology: that birds are far weirder, more wondrous, and at the same time more like us than we might have dared to imagine. In Birdology, beloved leader of The Excellent Excellent Pig Sy Montgomery explores the essence of the otherworldly creatures we see every day. By way of her adventures with seven birds—wild, tame, exotic, and common—she weaves new scientific insights and narrative to reveal seven kernels of bird wisdom.
The first lesson of Birdology is that, no matter how common they are, Birds Are Individuals, as each of Montgomery’s distinctive Ladies clearly shows. In the leech-infested rain forest of Queensland, you’ll come face to face with a cassowary—a 150-pound, man-tall, flightless bird with a helmet of bone on its head and a slashing razor-like toenail with which it (occasionally) eviscerates people—proof that Birds Are Dinosaurs. You’ll learn from hawks that Birds Are Fierce; from pigeons, how Birds Find Their Way Home; from parrots, what it means that Birds Can Talk; and from 50,000 crows who stirred into a tiny city’s downtown, that Birds Are Everywhere. They are the winged aliens who surround us.
Birdology clarifies just how very “additional” birds are: Their hearts look like persons of crocodiles. They are covered with modified scales, which are called feathers. Their bones are hollow. Their bodies are permeated with wide air sacs. They have no hands. They give birth to eggs. Yet despite birds’ and humans’ disparate evolutionary paths, we share emotional and intellectual abilities that allow us to communicate and even form deep bonds. When we start to comprehend who birds really are, we deepen our capacity to approach, know, and like these otherworldly creatures. And this, ultimately, is the priceless lesson of Birdology: it communicates a heartfelt fascination and awe for birds and restores our tie to these complex, mysterious fellow creatures.
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This book is generally well written but it has more to do with people than with birds. If you want to learn about birds there are far better books on the market. Montgomery’s homey approach to “Birdology” belies her aver to be a naturalist and
I establish her frequent religious references to be offensive.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
This is probably one of the most fun nonfiction books I’ve read in a while, but I hesitate to take the knowledge open herein as gospel. I’m no bird practiced, but even I could see a few places where she completely ignored the less satisfying research, and that makes me very hesitant to take any of it seriously. It’s a bring shame on, really, since the part about the parrot who’d been taught to speak would’ve been completely awesome if I hadn’t already seen enough small errors that I didn’t trust a thing she said.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
Like many readers, I establish myself painstakingly enchanted by Sy Montgomery’s previous book, “The Excellent Excellent Pig.” Not only was it an entertaining look at what it’s like to have a pig around your house (no, really, it’s kind of fun), but it was a touching look at what we’d all like to reflect of what Tiny Town USA is like. If you haven’t read it, go do so in the near future.
“Birdology” is a different book, but it’s still frequently fascinating. Who knew that birds were so appealing?
Montgomery goes through seven different birds here, one at a time. The first chapter probably is the most charming, as she returns to her home ground to write about her chickens. “The Ladies” are practically part of the family tree, with each of the birds having different personalities.
From there, Montgomery looks into pigeons that race, hummingbirds that are healed and raised, and crows who are told to get out of town. What’s more, there isn’t a terrible tale in the lot. I mean, who wouldn’t want to dance with a parrot on a birthday? Who wouldn’t want to see a bird who is left over from the dinosaur era?
Montgomery’s like of the theme matter certainly shines through in the course of the book. There are plenty of facts about each bird, of course, but this regularly concentrates on the people who like them — which has its own rewards. What’s more, the leader rarely gets bogged down in the text, which is a danger when writing about a scientific area.
Here’s one immediate effect from reading “Birdology”: This morning I went outside for something, and there was a bird standing on my driveway. I thought to myself, “I marvel what he’s thinking.” I wouldn’t have said that before I read this book. This will engage nearly any reader, and I can’t reflect of a better gift for the bird-watcher in your life.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
This book confirmed what I’ve permanently thought of birds – they’re a lot smarter than we humans give them credit for, by far. I loved the tale about the hens “the girls” the most. I recommend this book to birders and animal lovers alike.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
Naturalist and acclaimed leader Montgomery’s rhythmic and lyrical subtitle conveys the feel of this entertaining, eye-opening book about birds and the people who like them. If you’re one of persons who reflect crows are just raucous marauders and pigeons no more than rats with wings, this book may transform your thinking.
“Not much gets past a pigeon. They notice details that humans miss: one study establish that pigeons could learn to admit the difference between the painting style of Manet and that of Monet quicker than many college students. At one time, the U.S. Coast Guard trained pigeons in helicopters to spot orange life vests at sea; they outperformed human spotters three to one.” One wonders why they are no longer used but Montgomery doesn’t go into this.
She has a lot of territory to take in. Beginning with her own 20-year flock of chickens, Montgomery celebrates birds – their individuality, biology, and abilities. She opens each chapter with specifics – the people involved and the birds they are involved with – then ranges into the science surrounding the species, exploring their specialized anatomy and the many behavior studies.
Enraptured by her free-ranging chickens, affectionate hens who exhibit individual personalities, she intertwines an intriguing account of their lives and habits with results of studies on chicken communication and rooster behavior. But things change when a new flock of chickens takes up residence beside her own. “Everything the Rangers do is writ large. My hens are gentle, devious; they are Ladies. The Rangers are drama queens.” Observation drives her to the stunning conclusion that chicken culture is passed down through generations in one flock “of unrelated chickens of different breeds.”
Covered with persistent leeches, torn by thorns, Montgomery bleeds and sweats through the rainforests of Australia in search of the huge, flightless, elusive cassowary. Genetically alien to us, birds are descendants of dinosaurs and the very ancient cassowary is the best exemplar.
At the opposite extreme are the tiny, dynamic hummingbirds. Montgomery visits a woman who raises and frees orphaned hummingbirds near San Francisco (which has 400 species!). Designed for flight, birds are nearly more air than substance, and hummingbirds take this biology as far as it can go. Nearly two weeks ancient, two baby siblings “weigh less than a larger bird’s single flight spine.” If they survive they will be able to “hover, glide backward, even glide upside down.” Some hummingbirds can dive at more than 60 miles per hour.
Montgomery feeds us marvels of hummingbirds while the birds are fed every twenty minutes, lacking fail, all day long (everyone gets to sleep through the night). Though starvation is never far away, fledging is even more terrifying as there is nothing a hummingbird despises more than another hummingbird, and that includes any hapless fledglings not their own.
Then Montgomery learns falconry, a fraught experience for a dedicated vegetarian and animal lover, but the thrill of the hunt opens new vistas. “A raptor’s vision is the sharpest of all living creatures,” she tells us. An eagle at 1,000 feet can spot prey across three square miles. Flight demands such quick comprehension that, because of specialized brain circuitry “birds capture at a glance what it might take a human many seconds to apprehend.” “Raptors see in such fine detail that humans need microscopes to start to imagine it.”
Birds are also thought to see colors we cannot even clarify. At Irene Pepperberg’s lab (legendary for Alex, the African grey of Alex and Me) Montgomery sits in on a training session. Questioned to name the color of various objects, the young theme bird seems annoyed and frustrated. On a hunch, one of the experimenters paints all his orange toys the same color orange and the frustration disappears.
For her birthday Montgomery went dancing with Grow quickly, made legendary from a You-Tube video (if you haven’t seen it, do). Grow quickly lives in a rescue home with a lot of additional parrots because he fell in like with his previous owner’s daughter and was violently offended when she left him and went away to college.
The crows wind things up. Smart toolmakers and users, crows are less beloved for their urban winter roosting habits. In Auburn, NY, the winter population is 28,000 people, 50,000 crows. And they prefer downtown. Why is a matter of some speculation – warmth from the asphalt and concrete, perhaps, or the brilliant dumpster dining, or the bright lights that make predators visible. Montgomery visits the place when the city fathers choose to rid themselves of the crows once and for all.
Montgomery’s tales are amusing, sad, poignant and fascinating. Her writing is engaging and she shares vast swaths of the latest research. Which brings up my only complaint. I would have liked some chapter notes.
There is an pointer and a useful chapter-by-chapter bibliography, but notes referencing point studies would have been handy. I wanted to know more about the Monet-discerning pigeons, for example. Particularly as Montgomery more than once notes the conflicting results of bird studies (i.e., the incredible mechanics of migration).
But, this minor quibble in no way diminishes the pleasure of the read. I defy anyone to read this book and look at pigeons, crows, or even hummingbirds, persons tiniest dinosaurs, in reasonably the same way again.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5