The Bird Way by Jennifer Ackerman
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The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think
By Jennifer Ackerman
Penguin Group, 2020
Following the success of The Genius of Birds in 2016, science writer Jennifer Ackerman returns with another avian-centric book, The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think. While The Genius of Birds zoomed in specifically on bird intelligence, this new work takes a broader approach and aims to aid the human species in understanding what the world looks like to our feathered friends.
Readers, particularly those who have not yet fallen under the spell of birds, may wonder why Ackerman would add to the teetering pile of bird books already published (which includes not one, but two of her own previous works), but the endlessly entertaining content of the book provides the answer: not only does there seem to be a limitless well of information about these fascinating creatures, but our understanding of them is constantly growing and changing. Observations made in previous decades and cemented in textbooks can change on a dime when prolonged studies or advanced technologies reveal long-hidden secrets.
For example, we have only begun to understand that there exists an immense world outside of human perception; dogs can hear pitches the human ear can’t perceive, sound waves illustrate a world for bats and dolphins that we cannot navigate without special equipment, and birds have a seat at that table as well. It turns out that bird movements don’t merely seem zippily fast, they’re actually far too nimble for the human eye. In a chapter discussing male bird courtship displays, Ackerman explains:
We humans are constrained not just by our limited senses but by our perception of time. In the bird world, things happen fast, sometimes too fast for us to see. To make a point in talks, Mike Webster of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology shows a real-time video made by biologist Lainy Day of a male black manakin displaying in the forests of Guyana. In the film, the male manakin looks like it's simply hopping up and down. Then Webster plays Day’s high-speed video, which shows hundreds of frames per second, as the female manakin would see it. Jaws drop, and there’s an audible gasp from the audience. Between the little hops, the male completes a full-body, 360-degree flip, a high speed somersault too quick for us to see.
She adds an additional example of high-speed cameras picking up a species of African songbirds tap-dancing “in perfect time with their song.” Birds have been staging their own variety shows this whole time, and our limited eye capacity leaves us painfully without tickets.
With countless scientists wielding binoculars faced upwards, new information about the estimated 10,000 species of birds on the globe continues to flood in, expanding our knowledge base, shattering previously conceived notions, and making it abundantly clear that birds are far more impressive than ever realized. Beyond their transcendent visual abilities, birds communicate, hunt down food, engage in play, and raise young in unique ways suited to the challenges of their environments. Some choice examples from each of these categories appear in The Bird Way; Ackerman pulls from the latest studies and makes the science sing.
At the core of the book is a desire for the readers to see that, while we share a planet with birds, we occupy very different worlds. Our limitations as a species may keep us from ever getting the true bird’s-eye view of the planet in the literal sense, but advances in science can give us an idea. Ackerman takes that new science and makes it accessible for the bird-loving laymen amongst us. Equally as approachable as The Genius of Birds and with an enthusiasm that will make the reader excited to turn the pages, The Bird Way gives us visiting privileges into the world of these winged wonders.
—Olive Fellows is a young professional and Booktuber (at http://youtube.com/c/abookolive) living in Pittsburgh. Her work has appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.