A fascinating, authoritative avian history.
A study of birds as inspiration, enlightenment, and food.
Melding science, natural history, memoir, and travelogue, ornithologist Birkhead offers a commodious history of humans’ connection to birds, from prehistoric times to the current burgeoning interest in bird-watching. He begins in southern Spain, where depictions of more than 200 birds were discovered in Neolithic caves. This “birthplace of bird study” raises the question of the artists’ motivation: Do the images represent totemism, suggesting that birds were worshipped? Did the artists pay homage to birds prized for food? Did the images serve as a kind of field guide? In ancient Egypt, mummified birds were found in catacombs, preserved as food, pets for the deceased, or votive offerings. Birkhead examines early interest in investigating birds (by Aristotle and Pliny the Elder, for example); falconry as pastime, an “expensive, time-consuming” indulgence of aristocrats; and the medieval veneration of birds as “hovering midway between heaven and earth, half angels, half animals,” which can be deduced from the appearance of birds in religious paintings. As prey—sometimes for food, sometimes for sport—bird populations often have been decimated. Tudor England fostered an “unthinking persecution of wildlife” that included birds seen as “vermin.” In the late 1950s, Mao Zedong set off mass killings of sparrows, blamed for stealing grain. The 17th century saw a marked interest in scientific investigation, resulting in a proliferation of description, collection, and illustration of birds. Victorians paradoxically cherished birds, enjoying a vogue for caged songbirds but also for amassing specimens of birds, skins, and eggs. From acorn woodpeckers to zebra finches, Birkhead examines bird habitat, behavior, cultural meaning, and physiology in species around the world. He creates engaging portraits of the often eccentric individuals involved in bird investigations and reports on some exotic uses of birds for food—flamingos’ fatty tongues, for example, roast peacock, and fattened herons. This beautifully produced volume is replete with drawings, photographs, maps, and vivid color plates.
A fascinating, authoritative avian history.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-691-23992-7
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
HISTORY | NATURE | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | ANCIENT | WORLD
PERSPECTIVES
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
Are rivers alive? Macfarlane delivers a lucid, memorable argument in the affirmative.
The accomplished British nature writer turns to issues of environmental ethics in his latest exploration of the world.
In 1971, a law instructor asked a musing-out-loud question: Do trees have legal standing? His answer was widely mocked at the time, but it has gained in force: As Macfarlane chronicles here, Indigenous groups around the world are pressing “an idea that changes the world—the idea that a river is alive.” In the first major section of the book, Macfarlane travels to the Ecuadorian rainforest, where a river flows straight through a belt of gold and other mineral deposits that are, of course, much desired; his company on a long slog through the woods is a brilliant mycologist whose research projects have led not just to the discovery of a mushroom species that “would have first flourished on the supercontinent [of Gondwana] that formed over half a billion years ago,” but also to her proposing that fungi be considered a kingdom on a footing with flora and fauna. Other formidable activists figure in his next travels, to the great rivers of northern India, where, against the odds, some courts have lately been given to “shift Indian law away from anthropocentrism and towards something like ecological jurisprudence, underpinned by social justice.” The best part of the book, for those who enjoy outdoor thrills and spills, is Macfarlane’s third campaign, this one following a river in eastern Canada that, as has already happened to so many waterways there, is threatened to be impounded for hydroelectric power and other extractive uses. In delightfully eccentric company, and guided by the wisdom of an Indigenous woman who advises him to ask the river just one question, Macfarlane travels through territory so rugged that “even the trout have portage trails,” returning with hard-won wisdom about our evanescence and, one hopes, a river’s permanence and power to shape our lives for the better.
Are rivers alive? Macfarlane delivers a lucid, memorable argument in the affirmative.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780393242133
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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