“The Secret Life of Birds: Who they are and what they do” by Colin Tudge : 15 August 2011.
I have not been doing a great deal of birding this month because I have had a bad cold that has meant that I have been a bit house-bound. Having already read any outstanding books on my reading list and having exhausted my monthly supply of magazines I turned to an old favourite. This must have been the fourth time I have read Colin Tudge’s impressive and comprehensive book on birds and their world.
“TheSecret Life of Birds” follows the precedent set by his previous volume “The Secret Life of Trees” which I have also read but that does not hold the same interest for me as this book which is jam packed with information on bird biology and behaviour. The opening chapter deals with how one can define what a bird is and how birds evolved which is a huge topic on its own. This is followed by a brief history of taxonomy and the need for classification in the natural world. These two chapters take around 68 pages and constitute a sort of introduction to the place of birds in the natural system. The following one hundred pages deal with the taxonomy of birds themselves accurately entitled “All the Birds of the World : An Annotated Cast List”
After this already comprehensive introduction, Tudge gets down to the behaviour of birds and this is what makes the book so re-readable in my opinion. He has a very pragmatic approach to the state of ornithological research and its conclusions and does not get bogged down in whether one scientific position or another is the truth ; rather, where there is controversy on a topic, he prefers to explain the various arguments and their pros and cons and let the reader either judge for themselves or keep an open mind and admire the sophistication of avian research and theorising. This position works well for the casual but interested reader as he delves into the third section of the book dealing with “How Birds Live Their Lives”
In the third section Tudge considers food and the finding of it; breeding, nesting and rearing; sociability in birds, co-operation and conflict and, lastly he discusses the vexed question of bird intelligence and what that might be and whether birds have “minds” Over two hundred pages are given over to these issues and what comes out most clearly is that whether it is eating or breeding , or anything else in bird behaviour, there is a bird that does it every way possible under the sun and that no possible behavioral niche is left unoccupied as each species seeks that edge that will help them survive whether that is at the expense of other species or in co-operation with them.
In discussing these basic topics he covers a multitude of others just as challenging to human thinking such as the origin, purpose and nature of migration; the purpose of extravagant plumages in courtship; sexual selection; brood parasitism; familial organisation; the use of tools; behaviourism and ethology and so it goes on in an entertaining succession of one fascinating topic after another.
Tudge finishes with a final chapter named “Living with Birds and Learning from Birds” in which he deals, fairly briefly, with some of the issues of conservation and the importance of birds to human beings but this feels a little like the book tailing off and to be honest when I re-read the book I tend to miss out this last chapter and the taxonomic listing of the birds of the world and concentrate on the meat of the book.
It has to be said that this is not a book for scientists in the field and it is also true that there are some mistakes in the book and some of these are mentioned in some of the reviews on Amazon but in my opinion it would be a shame to discount this book for that reason. For the general reader it is a good introduction to many of the interesting aspects of the lives of birds written in a simple and amusing style and it makes for a very readable book. It’s infectious pleasure in the variety and mysteries of birds makes for a very good read – and re-read.
“The Secret Life of Birds: Who they are and what they do” by Colin Tudge, Penguin (6 Aug 2009), Paperback: 496 pages, ISBN-10: 0141034769, ISBN-13: 978-0141034768