100 books like Living as a Bird

Haraway’s book struck me like lightning. Here was a book that seemed to address relations between species in terms usually restricted to humans.

Many people, including social historians, have meaningfully described social formations in terms of various kinds of dependency and collaboration, for instance, slavery, feudalism, and companionship. After all, human-animal relations deserve a similar perspective. Human relations with dogs, cats, and birds, for instance, could be described in terms of a diversity of ranks and hierarchies. For other contexts involving domestic animals (including cows, reindeer, and horses), the language of slavery and servitude might be more relevant.

Haraway’s approach not only helps to illuminate complex nuances of modern biotechnology, to me it also seems vital at a time of escalating extinctions caused by humans. 

This book is truly a tour de force. Reading it, I was greatly impressed by its sweeping take on human relations with birds across countries and continents and throughout human history, sharing at the same time the author’s deep knowledge of birds and their habitats, his lifelong engagement with key field sites, and his unlimited fascination with the avian world.

I was also impressed by his perceptive and original observations of the lives of birds and the practices and politics of humans commenting upon them. Keeping in mind that birds are now increasingly seen as the canaries of the global coalmine, signifying the massive environmental dangers of the current age of extinction, this book, for me, provides a series of warnings, a profound message.

I was thrilled to read this book, with its moving environmental tales (one for a letter of the alphabet), beautifully illustrated by Wesley Allsbrook.

Here, Kolbert – an author who usually dives into science stories focusing on alarming cases – adopts an even more engaging style, still telling good stories but aiming for a broader readership. It seems to me that works of this kind are vital for the current age, providing accessible and authentic accounts of where humanity stands.

While the twenty-six pieces provide a bleak picture of a planet on the brink of collapse, possibly within the lifetime of a generation, I was captivated by the humanitarian tone and the emphasis on hope. For me, the narrative is gripping. I repeatedly get back to it, wishing I had more stories. 

I was deeply moved reading this book, a treatise about impending species death written by a fellow anthropologist facing her own death. The text freely moves back-and-forth between abstract reflections about life on the edge and observations on the mutual relations between indigenous Australians and flying-foxes (the only flying mammals in existence), now seriously threatened by both global warming and human encroachment.

This is not only a unique near-extinction saga; its language and framing took me straight into some of the biggest issues of our time, of what the author calls deathwork, the living dead, and double death, where death piles up by some domino effect. The book itself, to paraphrase its title, offers a shimmering light into the ethics and politics of species protection and the threat of extinction.

The thing I love about the subject of this book is that it is visible all around me. The great yearly drama of the nesting season is the most exciting part of watching birds. This is where the good stuff happens: song and courtship, battles over territory, the miracle of nest construction, the cuteness of babies, and the development of monogamy. 

Heinrich’s book opened my eyes to this story. He merges his deep scientific knowledge with personal observation, making that broader understanding applicable to what I can observe myself. He explores the different ways birds have of living their lives, constantly asking how we can explain those patterns not as random assemblages of behaviors but as comprehensible evolutionary strategies. He makes birds make sense.

This is not strictly an Australian bird book but is so rich in Australian content it might as well be.

American science writer Jennifer Ackerman takes us into the minds of birds and delivers surprises on every page. An explosion of recent research has shown birds to be far more sophisticated than was thought possible and Australian birds epitomise that. In her introduction Ackerman says that Australian birds crop up throughout her book for their extreme behaviours, intelligence, and ecological diversity.

She travelled Australia to see them and to interview experts, including me. Asking ‘Can a lyrebird lie?’ she offers evidence that they do. She tells of fairy-wrens and zebra finches communicating important information to their young while these are still inside their eggs.

We learn of brush turkey chicks, after hatching from the egg, spending more than two days digging to escape from the nest mound, then receiving no… show more.

Each of the five books on my list come at what’s happening to birds from a very different angle.

The Genius of Birds, a blockbuster by one of the world’s leading nature writers, tells a string of stories that help us understand why birds are both so remarkable and so crucial to the globe.

The thrust of the book is that birds are far smarter than once thought. But these chapters go much deeper than that into how birds are crafty, have tremendous memories, and are even capable of deceit.

Ackerman followed up The Genuis of Birds with an equally fascinating book, The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent and Think, that digs into the daily lives of birds.

Packing a huge amount of research onto every page, Strycker, who in his 2015 big year logged a record-setting 6,042 bird species, engagingly analyzes the biology and behavior of penguins, magpies, hummingbirds, albatrosses, and more to explore how the lives of birds are simultaneously incredibly alien to and indelibly intertwined with those of humans in activities and emotions as diverse as altruism, dancing, seduction, and fear. His insights, delivered with a light touch, may well change the worldview of those who think that humans are somehow more worthy than any other animal on the planet.

Leila Jeffreys treats the birds in her photography studio like celebrities destined for the cover of Vogue. She takes time getting to know them and letting them know her, so that instead of just seeing birds she sees into them, and they into her.

Her book of bird portraits is a testament to trust between divergent species. She mentions a black-breasted buzzard coming to accept her photographic gear then suddenly becoming very focussed on her: "It’s an exhilarating feeling when a bird makes this transition and we begin to communicate silently as we study each other. The intelligence of this bird was profound."

The birds in her portraits look variously intense or relaxed, curious or knowing, engaged or merely comfortable, soulful, intelligent, refined, and so much else. As a child, Jeffreys was ‘besotted’ with animals and saw them as people, imagining they could talk to her. That shows through… show more.

This is not an easy read, built on a deep academic tour of the evidence of how birds contribute to this world. But it makes up for the tough sledding by providing huge doses of detail that make the case for why we cannot let birds continue to wither away.

Birds consume, for instance, 400 to 500 tons of insects each year across the earth. They contribute to billions of dollars in value when you add up all the ways we rely on their pollinating, seed dispersal, garbage collection – not to mention the outdoor activities they provide people.

When bird species are pulled out of the equation, as vultures were in India for a time, the results can be catastrophic – leading to disease, death, and enormous health costs. By the time you finish this book, you’ll be ready to do whatever it takes to help stop the steady… show more.