Synopses & Reviews
What is it like to be a swift, flying at over one hundred kilometres an hour? Or a kiwi, plodding flightlessly among the humid undergrowth in the pitch dark of a New Zealand night? And what is going on inside the head of a nightingale as it sings, and how does its brain improvise?
Bird Sense addresses questions like these and many more, by describing the senses of birds that enable them to interpret their environment and to interact with each other. Our affinity for birds is often said to be the result of shared senses--vision and hearing--but how exactly do their senses compare with our own? And what about a bird's sense of taste, or smell, or touch, or the ability to detect the earth's magnetic field? Or the extraordinary ability of desert birds to detect rain hundreds of kilometres away--how do they do it?
Bird Sense is based on a conviction that we have consistently underestimated what goes on in a bird's head. Our understanding of bird behaviour is simultaneously informed and constrained by the way we watch and study them. By drawing attention to the way these frameworks both facilitate and inhibit discovery, Birkhead identifies ways we can escape from them to explore new horizons in bird behaviour. There has never been a popular book about the senses of birds. No one has previously looked at how birds interpret the world or the way the behaviour of birds is shaped by all their senses. A lifetime spent studying birds has provided Tim Birkhead with a wealth of observation and a unique understanding of birds and their behaviour that is firmly grounded in science.
Synopsis
Most people would love to be able to fly like a bird, but few of us are aware of the other sensations that make being a bird a gloriously unique experience. What is going on inside the head of a nightingale as it sings, and how does its brain improvise? How do desert birds detect rain hundreds of kilometers away? How do birds navigate by using an innate magnetic compass?
Tracing the history of how our knowledge about birds has grown, particularly through advances in technology over the past fifty years, Bird Sense tells captivating stories about how birds interact with one another and their environment. More advanced testing methods have debunked previously held beliefs, such as female starlings selecting mates based on how symmetrical the males plumage markings are. (Whereas females can discern the difference between symmetrical and asymmetrical markings, they are not very good at detecting small differences among symmetrically marked males!)
Never before has there been a popular book about how intricately bird behavior is shaped by birds senses. A lifetime spent studying birds has provided Tim Birkhead with a wealth of fieldwork experiences, insights, and a unique understanding of birds, all firmly grounded in science. No one who reads Bird Sense can fail to be dazzled by it.
Synopsis
A hugely engaging book about birds, their senses, and behaviour that is informed by an attractive blend of personal experience, entertaining stories and cutting-edge science.
Synopsis
What is going on inside the head of a nightingale as it sings, and how does its brain improvise? How do desert birds detect rain hundreds of kilometers away? How do birds navigate by using an innate magnetic compass? Tracing the history of how our knowledge about birds has grown, particularly through advances in technology over the past fifty years, Bird Sense tells captivating stories about how birds interact with one another and their environment.Never before has there been a popular book about how intricately bird behavior is shaped by birds' senses. A lifetime spent studying birds has provided Tim Birkhead with a wealth of fieldwork experiences, insights, and a unique understanding of birds, all firmly grounded in science. No one who reads Bird Sense can fail to be dazzled by it.
Synopsis
A captivating exploration of the homing instinct in animals, and what it means for human happiness and survival, from the celebrated naturalist and author of Mind of the Raven, Why We Run, and Life Everlasting
Synopsis
Acclaimed scientist and author Bernd Heinrich has returned every year since boyhood to a beloved patch of western Maine woods. What is the biology in humansand#160;of this deep-in-the-bones pull toward a particular place, and how is it related to animal homing?
Heinrich explores the fascinating science chipping away at the mysteries of animal migration:and#160;how geese imprint true visual landscape memory; how scent trails are used by many creatures, from fish to insects to amphibians, to pinpoint their home if they are displaced from it; and how the tiniest of songbirds are equipped for solar and magnetic orienteering over vast distances.and#160;Most movingly, Heinrich chronicles the spring return of a pair of sandhill cranes to their home pond in the Alaska tundra. With his trademark and#8220;marvelous, mind-alteringand#8221; prose (Los Angeles Times), he portrays the unmistakable signs of deep psychological emotion in the newly arrived birdsand#8212;and reminds us that to discount our own emotions toward home is to ignore biology itself.
About the Author
Tim Birkhead is a professor at the University of Sheffield where he teaches animal behaviour and the history of science. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and his research has taken him all over the world in the quest to understand the lives of birds. He has written for The Independent, New Scientist, BBC Wildlife. Among his other books are Promiscuity, Great Auk Islands, The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Birds. which won the McColvin medal, The Red Canary, which won the Consul Cremer Prize, and The Wisdom of Birds. He is married with three children and lives in Sheffield.
Table of Contents
Prefaceand#8195;viiIntroductionand#8195;ix
I. Homing
Cranes Coming Homeand#8195;5
Beeliningand#8195;19
Getting to a Good Placeand#8195;37
By the Sun, Stars, and Magnetic Compassand#8195;63
Smelling Their Way Homeand#8195;95
Picking the Spotand#8195;109
II. Home-making and Maintaining
Architectures of Homeand#8195;125
Home-making in Surinameand#8195;151
Home Crashersand#8195;167
Charlotte II: A Home Within a Homeand#8195;181
The Communal Homeand#8195;201
III. Homing Implications
The In and Out of Boundariesand#8195;221
Of Trees, Rocks, a Bear, and a Homeand#8195;233
On Home Groundand#8195;247
Fire, Hearth, and Homeand#8195;269
Homing to the Herdand#8195;283
Epilogueand#8195;303
Acknowledgmentsand#8195;315
Further Readingand#8195;317
Indexand#8195;343