Bird Sense: What It's Like to Be a Bird

Birds have graced our world for over 170 million years. During that time they have evolved to fit into a variety ecological niches; thriving on on every continent, from the tropics to the poles and everywhere in between. And they are equally at home in our oceans and fresh water environs, easily diving into deep water, snatching prey from the surface or navigating the trackless seas far from any land. "Bird Sense", written by biologist Tim Birkhead, is a truly amazing book on avian biology. Covering all the senses that you're familiar with as well as a couple you may not have thought of. For most animals, birds included, vision and hearing are of primary importance for their day to day survival. But how good is their vision? Their hearing? Do they perceive the world like we do? And how about touch, smell and taste? These too are a vital part of living. For each of these senses Dr. Birkhead gives an in depth anatomy lesson on how the eyes work, where their ears are located and how the inner ear functions. The discovery of nerve-endings for touch, taste and smell and how they work. An owl can catch mice in near darkness and from some distance away. How do they do that and are all birds just as gifted? Then there's the mystery of migration and how birds can navigate over long distances to arrive at nesting grounds at just the right time. Do they use the landscape or the stars or, maybe, they have some kind of magnetic sense unknown to us? This well written book covers it all, and more, in a easy, conversational, way. For hundreds of years now people have been observing and studying birds, their findings are not always right but they do lead to more research and there's no end in sight. I noticed that some Amazon reviewers down graded the book due an "operation" preformed to remove a "live", and conscious, bat's eyeballs to see if they could still get around their enclosure. As distressing as that sounds keep in mind the author did not preform that operation. It was done back in the mid 18th century by an Italian professor of natural history, Lazzaro Spallanzani, and his findings are a matter of record. I seriously doubt that any modern day biologist would need, or want, to preform such a procedure. Be that as it may Professor Spallanzani's report is only a short segment out of very good book. If your at all interested in birds or biology in general you'll find plenty of fascinating reading in "Bird Sense". I had no downloading or technical problems with this Kindle edition.Last Ranger

This is a fine book, and I wish it were longer. Birkhead covers senses very well, with a great deal of recent research that would otherwise be totally outside the radar of most birdwatchers. (I try to keep up on the journals--a bit--but most of the new research here was new to me.) There are some areas slurred over. The worst is the final chapter, on emotions. Birkhead poses the problems without saying much about solutions. Starting with "consciousness": The question of whether birds have "consciousness" is meaningless, because philosophers and cognitive scientists use the word in several ways and never tell you which they are using--sometimes they use the word in two different senses in the same sentence. If consciousness means what it means to normal people--the opposite of being knocked out or deeply asleep--of course birds have consciousness. If it means being socially conscious (in the sense of fighting for the Good and the Right) of course birds don't seem to have it. In between is what some animal behaviorists mean: the ability to sit back and think about what you are feeling or thinking. This isn't a normal meaning of consciousness, but it's used. We can't test birds for it and probably never will. I could think of several more meanings given to "consciousness" in the literature. As to "emotion": Somewhat the same deal. Obviously, even fish and frogs, let alone birds, feel fear, rage, mating desire, attraction to food, etc. At the other end of the scale, probably only humans can appreciate the incredible subtleties that Proust felt when nibbling the famous madeleine. Birds are somewhere in between, but where? How do they feel when mobbing an owl at risk of their lives? At some level they must realize that they may be giving their lives to save their families. How do they feel when singing--a much more complex act than we used to think? They must have fairly rich and complex emotions, or feelings, but Birkhead merely asks the question about what they might feel, without saying much about what could be a reasonable answer. Maybe caution is best, but I'd have liked more philosophic discussion.

Tim Birkhead has done us all a great service. While the culture still refers to a foolish person as a "bird brain" and many assume birds are just creatures of instinct, he demonstrates conclusively that there is a lot more to bird intelligence than we knew. I teach courses in Communication, and I've been fascinated to learn that the sounds birds make have specific meanings; that they have superior eyesight to humans; and that some birds are capable of planning, problem-solving, and even making friends with others in their species. Birkhead's style is very readable-- he is an ornithologist, but he writes like a story-teller, and even readers who do not have a science background will find his examples and his explanations quite easy to follow. Further, his enthusiasm in discussing bird behavior and intelligence, and his observations about various kinds of birds, make this book even more interesting. Some American readers may find the use of British spelling a bit unusual (the publisher did not create a specifically American edition), but this is a wonderful book, and it makes a good introduction to why birds behave the way they do.

After 'The Wisdom of Birds' I thought that it would be very difficult for anyone to write anything quite so good about birds for a long time. I am pleased to say that I was totally wrong - its been done again, and by the same author! For anyone who has watched birds for any length of time it is not long before they start asking questions such as 'how do they do that?' or 'how can they sense that whereas I can't?'. Tim Birkhead deals with all these questions related to the senses, including magnetic sense and emotions. There is something on almost every page that even the most experienced amateur birdwatcher will not know or about which they will gain a greater understanding. It is so interesting that it is difficult to put down - a great page turner! The great strength of this book is that Tim explains things simply and clearly; he has made scientific knowledge available to all - a great gift! DaveK

I knew next to nothing about birds before reading Bird Sense, but this book has propelled me into a new avian universe and I am hooked. Every other page I had to stop and find someone to grab hold of and tell them what I had just read. Now I look upon birds with awe: at their capacity for seeing - like the kestrel that can pick out a 2mm grub at 18m - at smelling - the kiwi can sniff out worms 15cm below the ground - and most spectacularly - migration - the godwit, for example, which makes an 11,000km, non-stop flight, from Alaska to New Zealand. The book is beautifully written by a man who has spent most of his life intrigued and immersed in ornithology, and to whom I would like to say thank you, this is a work full of wonders.

A book about bird sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell, magnetic sense and emotions - surely not my cup of tea?But this one is. Absolutely fascinating. Not only is Tim Birkhead clearly an expert scientist and bird authority but he tells the story of each of the senses from the discoveries of ages past to current state of the art research.And his descriptions and stories of the characters who observed and studied each of the senses gives the book a real depth. For example the larger than life character Audobon - the illegitimate son of a French sea captain and a servant girl who was born in Haiti in 1785. He made his living from bird illustrations and became a success with his art in Liverpool. He carried out exotic experiments on turkey vultures sense of smell. These led to Richard Owen in 1837 dissecting turkey vultures and revealing their trigeminal nerve to be particularly large - smell not sight was their major source of direction.Some of the discoveries - like the very high pitched radar like sounds emitted and received by bats - came from tangential experience. Sir Hiram Maxim, after the sinking of the Titanic in 1921, developed very low frequency echo sounding to locate icebergs. He was the first to suggest that bats may use sounds inaudible to the human ear to navigate in total darkness, contradicting the conventional belief that bats navigated by touch . It was not until the 1940's that the bats echolocation system was confirmed.Each sense is investigated in detail with different species relying to a greater or lesser extent on different senses: with owls, hearing, with gannets sight, with kiwis smell and touch, with the incubation of eggs tactile sensitivity.The ingenuity of the observations and experiments is combined with cutting edge science involving brain imaging, fitting birds with GPS and touch and temperature sensors. It is probably the magnetic sense - how do migrant birds not just navigate but establish their position - and extent of emotional sense where controversy continues to rage most strongly.This book must be the reference for the current state of knowledge on bird senses. But Birkhead concludes that the understanding of the human sensory system is advancing in leaps and bounds and the golden age of sensory research in birds is still to come. No doubt Birkhead himself will be in the vanguard. And I hope he writes a sequel to reveal the next discoveries in bird sensibility.

This book is not just for those with an interest in birds but for all nature lovers because it really does reveal so many of the incredible ways in which birds function, allowing the reader to apply the insights to examples immediately in their own back garden. The senses are picked apart and although some of the examples refer to birds from foreign climes (the Oilbird is particularly fascinating), British birds get frequent mentions and it's now clear to me how a duck knows crumb from dirt when trawling the river in search of food. There is always a danger such a book gets bogged down in scientific jargon that alienates the reader but this one successfully engages to the end, the only frustration being that we do not know all of the answers yet....but then where is the fun in that.

I've enjoyed birds ever since I was a child, since 1958 in fact when my grandfather's anthropomorphous characterisations of the birds visiting his garden amused and enthralled me. I'm a bird watcher rather than a "twitcher", or even a "birder", but I have also flirted at times with the notion that I could be an ornithologist. This book makes me wish I'd further developed my ornithological leanings. It's that rarest of things, a book about birds that is as gripping as the better fiction, and as illuminating as the better text books. I loved the way it combines an informed account of the development of the science of ornithology with an almost journalistic approach to the people and issues involved so that I felt an immediacy about the historical context, whilst learning eye-opening "facts" about the birds I enjoy so much. This is because Tim Birkhead's writing style finds a nice balance between the academic - the book is always just scientifically challenging enough to provoke the reader's interest - and the journalistic reporting of characters and events that render it at the same time entertaining. The knowledge it imparts so knowledgeably and entertainingly will certainly enhance any reader's enjoyment of the birds they encounter. As a layman with an interest in birds, I loved it.