Eye-opening, if best suited for the geekiest birders and enginerds.
How an owl hunts silently in total darkness, and why it matters.
Water off a duck’s back, light as a feather, bird-brained—to engineers, these aren’t just sayings, but inspiration. From the Wright brothers’ fixation on the flight of gannets when designing their first planes to more recent developments like quiet wind turbines that draw from the design of owl feathers, engineers have drawn their designs from nature. Gibson, a professor of materials science and engineering at MIT and an avid birder, seeks to make these complex machinations of birds accessible in this informative primer on bird science. In chapters covering feathers, bones, bills, eggs, and flight, Gibson explains scientific concepts from their simple foundations (“But what is color?”) to their more complex conclusions (“Hummingbirds achieve their spectacular iridescent colors with between 7 and 15 well-defined layers of melanosomes, pancake-shaped melanin structures with interior air pockets”). Drawing from her engineering background, Gibson draws parallels between engineering and nature, giving readers deeper insights into both. For example, the author explains how a penguin’s down feathers reduce the conduction, convection, and radiation of heat in order to withstand Antarctic blizzards while noting the same science applies to sleeping bags. While consistently interesting, the writing is to the point and, at times, flat: “When I look at these bones, they seem almost like works of sculpture— they’re really beautiful.” The book often gets bogged down by minutiae, such as the precise scientific names of the pigments that give many bird eggs their colors. But the occasional interesting anecdote will sustain less-scientifically minded readers: how woodpeckers delayed a NASA launch by pecking holes in the foam protecting a space shuttle’s fuel tank or the idea that it’s “actually possible for a barefoot person to walk (carefully) on chicken eggs still in their carton without breaking them.”
Eye-opening, if best suited for the geekiest birders and enginerds.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9780262049894
Page Count: 256
Publisher: MIT Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A charming, thoughtful pleasure for any animal lover.
A celebration of animal companions, mammalian, reptilian, avian, and otherwise.
The Ulysses S. Cat of NPR commentator Simon’s title was a “chunky orange Scottish Fold with endearing floppy ears and a broad, flat face that looked…as if he had been running full steam after a mouse when a door opened and…splat!” He may not have been the most photogenic of critters, but he was a steadfast companion to Simon’s mother and stepfather as the latter suffered illness and death. Other creatures populate Simon’s pages: a betta named Salman Fishdie, a grasshopper named Hoppy, many dogs and cats. Simon ranges widely to collect his stories; among the most affecting is a portrait of the people of Sarajevo under siege by Serbian forces, punctuated by an impatient colleague’s saying to Simon, “I do not want to get shot while doing a fucking pet story.” A good point, that, but Simon is emboldened and moved by the Sarajevans’ and U.N. soldiers’ care for pets displaced from their homes. “In making room for animals at the lowest times of their lives,” he writes, “Sarajevo showed the world real humanitarian aid.” In a somewhat lighter turn, Simon voices the hope that the afterlife will involve meeting again with all the animals and people we have loved, with no hard distinction drawn between birds, dogs, cats, turtles, and other beloved animal companions and other members of one’s family, biological and elective. While recognizing that animals make us better humans, holding unconditional love but eschewing grudges, Simon also decries the misuse of animals, particularly in laboratory settings where other modeling methods can be used that do not visit pain and death on such creatures as chimpanzees and white rats. Writes Simon, meaningfully, “Someday, I’m pretty sure we’ll look back on our use of animals in this way as something brutal.” Amen.
A charming, thoughtful pleasure for any animal lover.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781324117186
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
PERSPECTIVES
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