From the New York Times bestselling author of The Genius of Birds and What an Owl Knows a
radical investigation into the bird way of being and the recent scientific research that is
dramatically shifting our understanding of birds -- how they live and how they think. “There
is the mammal way and there is the bird way.” But the bird way is much more than a unique
pattern of brain wiring and lately scientists have taken a new look at bird behaviors they
have for years dismissed as anomalies or mysteries –– What they are finding is upending the
traditional view of how birds conduct their lives how they communicate forage court breed
survive. They are also revealing the remarkable intelligence underlying these activities
abilities we once considered uniquely our own: deception manipulation cheating kidnapping
infanticide but also ingenious communication between species cooperation collaboration
altruism culture and play. Some of these extraordinary behaviors are biological conundrums
that seem to push the edges of well birdness: a mother bird that kills her own infant sons
and another that selflessly tends to the young of other birds as if they were her own a bird
that collaborates in an extraordinary way with one species—ours—but parasitizes another in
gruesome fashion birds that give gifts and birds that steal birds that dance or drum that
paint their creations or paint themselves birds that build walls of sound to keep out
intruders and birds that summon playmates with a special call—and may hold the secret to our
own penchant for playfulness and the evolution of laughter. Drawing on personal observations
the latest science and her bird-related travel around the world from the tropical rainforests
of eastern Australia and the remote woodlands of northern Japan to the rolling hills of lower
Austria and the islands of Alaska’s Kachemak Bay Jennifer Ackerman shows there is clearly no
single bird way of being. In every respect in plumage form song flight lifestyle niche
and behavior birds vary. It is what we love about them. As E.O Wilson once said when you have
seen one bird you have not seen them all.
