The book is divided into the five sections–talk, work, play, love, parent–and within those sections into 14 chapters that focus on a singular aspect of that behavior–alarm calls, mimicry, using smell, fire spreading, following army ants, Raven play, Kea play, diversity of sexual practices, crazy and exotic ways of wooing the female, diversity of parenting behavior (including Brush Turkeys, who bury their eggs in a huge mound of leaf litter where the hatched chicks must fight their way out), brood parasitism (which demands more skills than you may think), and cooperative parenting. It was a pleasure to make these observations at the same time I was reading The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think, Jennifer Ackerman’s new book about the diversity and complexity of bird behavior.Ī logical and outstanding successor to The Genius of Birds (2016), Ackerman’s award-winning book about bird cognition, The Bird Way explores the diversity of bird behavior, the norm and the extremes, with an emphasis on cutting-edge research and findings that explode assumptions. Bird behavior–endlessly fascinating, but so much still hidden and unknown. And so, I’ve spent the past few weeks observing Black Skimmers doing aerial maneuvers as they skirmish with one another for no discernible reason young Ospreys building a lopsided nest atop a high school athletic field pole, too sparse for actual nesting but hopefully good practice for next summer Piping Plover chicks picking grubs out of the mud flat till mama sounds a high-pitched warning note, the signal to run back and nestle safely beneath her body, all legs hidden. One good thing about birding during a pandemic–the forced restrictions on place and time translate into more time to observe what birds do.

The Bird Way by Jennifer Ackerman