behaviour

Throughout the bird world, examples of strange and seemingly inexplicable behaviours abound. For example: Why do Male Fairywrens bring flowers to females as a nuptial gift in the pre-dawn darkness? Especially when the gift-givers are not the official mates of the females concerned, but visitors, and furthermore they may give these gifts in full view of the official mate. Why do gangs of White-winged Choughs “kidnap” their neighbours’ fledglings and then keep them in their “gang”? Which bird is so big, strong and fierce that stories abound of it killing humans? This book looks at accounts of murderous Cassowaries and explains just what might have happened. What happens in an albatross “divorce”? This book divides the world by continent and takes a series of extraordinary stories from each to illustrate a great diversity of bird behaviour. Each continent has around five or six stories, each described in 1,500 to 2,000 words and examines the truths and the mythology behind each example. An intriguing book from an author with an ability to engage with his audience.

Each spring and autumn hundreds of millions of birds – wildfowl, shorebirds, raptors, and passerines – migrate between latitudes. In a handful of places around the world, a combination of geography, topography and climate combine to funnel migrant birds into narrow fronts, leading to migration hotspots, places where, for a few days each year, birds seem to be everywhere. The sight of thousands upon thousands of birds is one of nature’s greatest wildlife spectacles. This book takes a look at 29 locations where the planet’s most dramatic bird migration can be witnessed, from raptor bottlenecks such as Veracruz (Mexico) and the Strait of Messina (Italy) to places like Point Pelee (Canada) and Beidaihe (China) where spectacular falls of songbirds can take place. The book covers each of the world’s major avian flyways and features stunning photography throughout.
The geographical reasons for the importance of each hotspot are explained, with a summary of the different birds that pass through and the best times of year to see them, and an introductory chapter summarises birds’ migration strategies.

A lifetime spent studying birds has provided Tim Birkhead with a wealth of observation and an understanding of birds and their behaviour that is firmly grounded in science. What is it like to be a swift, flying at over one hundred kilometres an hour? Or a kiwi, plodding flightlessly among the humid undergrowth in the pitch dark of a New Zealand night? And what is going on inside the head of a nightingale as it sings, and how does its brain improvise? This book addresses questions like these and many more, by describing the senses of birds that enable them to interpret their environment and to interact with each other. Our affinity for birds is often said to be the result of shared senses – vision and hearing – but how exactly do their senses compare with our own? And what about a birds’ sense of taste, or smell, or touch or the ability to detect the earth’s magnetic field? Or the extraordinary ability of desert birds to detect rain hundreds of kilometres away – how do they do it? This book is based on a conviction that we have consistently underestimated what goes on in a bird’s head. Our understanding of bird behaviour is simultaneously informed and constrained by the way we watch and study them.
By drawing attention to the way these frameworks both facilitate and inhibit discovery, it identifies ways we can escape from them to seek new horizons in bird behaviour. There has never been a popular book about the senses of birds. No one has previously looked at how birds interpret the world or the way the behaviour of birds is shaped by their senses. Also available in hardcover [stock id 33708].

Presents a detailed review of the fascinating ecological findings of bird migration. This book deals with various aspects of this subject, including the problems of navigation and vagrancy, the timing and physiological control of migration and the factors that limit their populations.